the broken ones
by summertimesadness
Summary: AU: She's hated every bone in his body since high school. He's finally decided to make things right with her - just as long as he has enough time to do it.
1. Chapter 1: Now

There isn't a lot of room at an airport.

Sure, when you walk up to it with your luggage in one hand and your whining kid in the other, it seems pretty big. The airplane hangars alone take up enough space, and the terminal just about consumes the entire building; creating in itself a mall and a living room all in one. The airport turns into a giant store instead of a place to exchange travelers all of a sudden, swallowing people up and spitting them out at whatever destination it is that they need to get to.

You see it on the highway when you're driving alongside of it, finding it hard to avoid staring at the planes that wait on their lunch break until their next takeoff in the hangar, and still feeling your heart skip a beat when a plane that once looked so small in the sky is now swooping down over your car, looking more terrifying than Godzilla.

Rachel hates airports. And not a normal kind of toss-the-word around hate. She hates them with same fury she saves up for flip phones and people who still use Zunes.

And Rachel doesn't hate anything.

She stands around for a while to begin with, not knowing what to do with herself. There isn't much to do, really. The off-white washed walls are enough to make a hospital look cozy (why the words hospital and hospitable sound so alike, she'll never know), and the little plastic chairs that people occupy look like they would fall somewhere between a bed of nails and an electric chair on the comfort scale.

She doesn't know why she's here, really.

A million people (no, 7 billion, she corrects herself) in the world and she's the one that's doing this?

Rachel Berry's always been the fly on the wall that no one's bothered to notice – or, at least if they did, it was to tell her that her nose was too big or her hair was too dark or she was too short. She never received much positive reinforcement from her peers growing up, finding that most of the compliments she received in life came from her father and mother. Rachel's always been the quiet girl tat nurses a Sprite in a plastic red cup in the corner of a party. She's there; you just don't know that she is.

She doesn't really want you to know, either.

Rachel watches as a plane descends down onto the tarmac of the airport, finding more interest in looking out the large floor-to-ceiling windows that seem to be a staple at every airport. She makes a mental note that if this is indeed his plane, to smile and wave and even offer him a hug or two. Be polite. Offer to take his luggage out to your car for him.

Just don't bring up the time he and his friends rigged a bucket of fruit punch to spill on you in front of everyone at junior prom.

A woman that works at the airport walks towards the podium that's by the door to the entryway of the plane, which she can see them setting up now from outside.

She's tall, leggy, and blonde. A million dollar smile and a coiffed hairstyle to match. She's the ideal woman to work at an airport.

"Now arriving, New York City to Lima."

Her voice sounds like a toothpaste commercial.

The plane takes a while to unload all of its passengers; women with crying babies in their arms and businessmen trying to juggle their cell phones and carry-ons, tourists who snap a picture with the cameras dangling around their necks of everything their eyes discover. It makes Rachel wonder why anyone would ever come to Lima as a tourist attraction, but she decides that she can't judge anyone for it. It's not her fault she's spent her entire life in Ohio, and to each his own, anyway.

Rachel stands up on her toes and anxiously searches the crowds of people for his face, wondering if she'll recognize him. It's been seven years, after all, with four years of college lumped in there somewhere. College changes you from the inside out, and that's what she's thinking has happened to her. If she can remember correctly, Finn never went to college, but she did. She's changed a lot. Maybe Finn will notice how much she's changed and it will affect how he treats her. Maybe he's matured and he can look at her and hold a civil conversation with her without making a jab at how she looks or walks or speaks.

Then again, he could always just stay the same way forever.

She waits for him anxiously, hoping that at the very least he recognizes her. Rachel doesn't even know why he had called her in the first place. Maybe all of his friends from high school have disowned him because they've already changed and think he's a jerk, just how she thought he was in high school. Or maybe none of his friends live in Lima anymore. Maybe they all moved off to do bigger and better things.

Rachel hears the clicking sound of crutches from the hall and pricks up her ears, wondering if it's Finn.

The most hated person in her life for four years, and he's on crutches. Maybe it's some stupid ploy to make her feel bad for him despite all he's done to her.

She can't help but suppress a small smile when she sees him hobble into the lobby, looking much different than she remembers him. His hair has been cut into a military buzz cut, or whatever the official name is, his face not as freckled as she once remembered it to be. He wears a military uniform and rests on a pair of crutches, looking pained as he makes his way towards her.

Maybe she's wrong to still believe that he's so horrible. He is on crutches, after all.

Her heart stammers slightly and she doesn't know why. There's no sentiment or apathy felt for Finn. There never really was to begin with.

Finn's eyes scan the airport for a moment, Rachel wondering if he's actually looking for her. Maybe this is all one big joke he's playing on her. Maybe Quinn Fabray and Noah Puckerman are going to jump out and tell her that she's a sucker and she's stupid for thinking that Finn would ever actually want to spend time with her.

She bites down on her lip, watching his eyes fall on her. She looks down at the ground, hoping he doesn't recognize her completely. She's changed enough. Maybe he won't think that she's ugly anymore, if anything.

"Rachel?" He asks, looking like he's struggling with his backpack. She looks up at him through her eyelashes and crosses her arms over her chest. He makes his way towards her, stumbling slightly with his crutches. Rachel wonders if he's expecting her to run up to him and hug him, or something stupid. Just because he's in the army doesn't mean that he's actually changed. You wear a green uniform and carry a gun and everyone thinks you're a hero.

"Hi," she says, waving at him slightly. She doesn't really want to talk to him. She doesn't really want to talk to anyone. All she wants to do is go home and forget about anything that's ever happened between her and Finn Hudson.

"Rachel Berry," he says, looking at her as he sports a toothy grin. She looks at him and nods, sighing to herself.

"Finn Hudson," she says, the words sour in her mouth. She doesn't want to see him or speak to him or acknowledge him ever again, and she's never thought that she would ever have to see him ever again. The day Rachel graduated was supposed to mark the day she would never have to see Finn Hudson ever again. Now, it's like every promise she made to herself when she was eighteen has just been flushed down a big, metaphorical toilet.

She doesn't understand why all of these feelings from high school need to be regurgitated all over again.

"You look… wow," he says, still looking at her. Rachel wants to roll her eyes and walk away, not having to handle spending any more time with him.

"You too," she says, not necessarily lying. Finn's always been handsome; she's never been able to deny that. It's just his personality that's always trumped his hazel eyes and the freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose and how Rachel knows that she would be able to fit under his arm perfectly if he ever tried to fit her under there. She can't look away from him in the army uniform and crutches; not looking like himself. She doesn't want to stare at him and make him feel uncomfortable in anyway, but the more she thinks about it, the more she remembers how Finn used to do the same things to her when they were younger – but not in a good way.

She sees him, however. He's already taken note of what she's doing.

"Yeah, um, I don't mind if you stare at my leg," he tells her with a laugh as he looks down at his leg. "I got released on an honorable discharge. I got shot in the leg, and-"

"Oh, God," Rachel says, interrupting him. She puts her hand up to her mouth and gasps slightly. She never would have guessed that Finn would have gotten shot when he had been shipped out to the military upon graduation, nor did she wish it upon him. "Wow, Finn, I'm sorry. That sort of stuff comes with the territory though, doesn't it?" She doesn't mean to sound rude, it's just the way she comes off some times. He can't be too upset with her. He's been rude to her longer than he can probably remember.

"Yeah," he says, looking at her. She wonders why he keeps his eyes so dutifully trained on her while he speaks to her. No man has ever looked at her this way, especially one like Finn Hudson. She's always been that kind of girl; getting noticed by people who others would rather ignore all together. She's never been the most beautiful girl in the room, nor has she ever had a man actively pine after her that she's been mutually interested in.

"I didn't think you would still be in the army," she says, looking around the airport, trying to do everything in her power to look away from him. "I read something somewhere about how most people who join the military straight out of high school choose not to serve about a year into their training, or whatever." She looks back up at him, noticing him stare at her. She doesn't like it. His eyes trained on her and not turned into some cruel smirk that she's grown so accustomed to seeing.

"I never really thought that I was going to get shot in the leg," he tells her, laughing bitterly. He forces a smile and Rachel wants nothing more than to roll her eyes at his cheesy smile ad undeniable schmaltz that he's trying to push on her.

"I'm sorry," she says, her voice quiet. She looks down at her feet and crosses her arms over her chest. She doesn't want to seem cold and mean; he's been that way towards her enough already.

There's a long beat of silence between them, Rachel unsure of what to do about it. She doesn't understand what she's doing at the airport, or why she's the one that needs to pick Finn up and be the first person he sees now that he's back from Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever he's coming from.

That and he won't stop staring at her. His eyes look at her and rake her over like she's some artifact in a museum. It's not in an objectifying way, but she doesn't like it. She doesn't like him, so she doesn't like him staring at him.

"Well, why don't we go get your luggage and get going," she tells him, turning around and walking towards the direction of the luggage carousels. Maybe if she rushes through the time she needs to spend with Finn, it will go by faster. It's the least she can do.

:.:.:

Rachel's never driven this fast before. She's packed all of his bags into the backseat of her car and told him to sit in the front next to her. She starts driving faster than she knows is safe, but she doesn't really care. All Rachel wants to do is get Finn to whatever hotel he's planning on staying at and go home so she can talk to Kurt about how one of her worst enemies from high school is back to haunt her again.

"So, how have you been, Rachel?" Finn asks, breaking the silence between them. His voice frightens her and she doesn't want to say anything. Rachel tries to think of a lie that will get her out of needing to tell him anything about herself. He doesn't need to know anything about her.

"Fine," she says plainly, keeping her eyes trained on the road ahead of her. Rachel bites down on her lip and doesn't want to say anything else, but she can see Finn looking at her out of the corner of her eye. "I haven't really done anything special since you've seen me last, I guess." Finn rolls his eyes and smiles.

"Please," he tells her, Rachel wanting to cringe every time she hears him try to speak to her. "Last time I saw you, you were all ready to go to school and become a 'big, independent woman,' or whatever." He laughs. "I'm sure you've done some pretty amazing things since then."

"I'm a music teacher now," she confesses. "I teach at Newport, actually." She looks at Finn, hoping he'll remember.

"Oh," he says, nodding along with the words she says. "Does it look the same?" He pauses and looks at her, Rachel turning her head to look at her for the first time since getting in the car.

"Yeah," she says, smiling sweetly. It's the first time she's bothered to show any kind of outward kindness towards him all day, and much to her surprise, it doesn't make her feel horrible. Rachel thought that showing Finn any kind of kindness or sympathy would make her feel guilty or horrible, but it doesn't. Rachel isn't a horrible person, she just feels like she needs to be when she's around Finn. He's never been nice to her, so she's made the decision to not be nice to him, even though she knows that two wrongs don't make a right. Part of her wonders if he feels bad now that she's being rude and choosing to ignore him, but she decides that it's just as well. Finn's made her feel like she's the most hated person on earth for seven years, so maybe it's fair that she gets to treat him the way he treated her in high school – even if it's only for twenty minutes inside her car. "It's kind of funny, actually," she continues, smiling softly. "Do you remember how there was that poster of the rabbit washing its hands in the cafeteria?" Rachel's smile becomes bigger and she looks over at Finn, giggling. The poster she describes is one that had become a staple of her childhood; remembering it in the back of her head every time she did so much as go to the doctor or be told to wash her hands by her parents as a little girl.

"Yeah," he says, grinning. "That creepy ass rabbit with the pink overalls." He laughs and looks out his window. "That's still there?"

Rachel nods and laughs to herself. She can't really believe it either, simply because the poster is so old and Finn actually remembers it. She vaguely remembers the two of them going to elementary school together. It's not like high school, where most of their past is. Elementary school was a happier time. Finn would sit next to Rachel in class and tell her that her hair looked pretty when her mother would put it in braids every Friday or that he actually wanted to be on her team for soccer when they would play it in second grade gym class.

"Yes," she says, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. They've hit traffic and her car slowly comes to a halt; Rachel knowing that she's finally going to have to face the inevitable task of holding an actual conversation with Finn instead of just wasting time with small talk and awkward pauses. "I mean, I don't spend much time in the cafeteria, but, you know, the music classroom is right outside the cafeteria, so I've seen it… more than a couple of times."

Finn looks at her with a smile, shifting in his chair as best as he can. He lets out a small groan and Rachel turns to look at him, afraid that he's actually hurt himself. Whether he had been horrible to her in high school or not, there's still a part of Rachel that wants to make sure that Finn feels good as long as he's in her care. He just looks at her and nods his head; a silent reminder that he's fine without his crutches or some giant bandage around his leg.

There's a pause between them and Rachel sighs, staring out the windshield at the traffic ahead of them. "Oh, um, you should probably tell me which hotel you're staying at," she tells him, clenching her jaw. "I can drop you off there and help you with your bags if you'd like." She looks back out on the road, feeling Finn turn his head to face her. The silence between them makes her feel like she's ready to explode; the tension in her small car palpable.

"I… I was kind of hoping that I would stay with you," he confesses, looking down into his lap and drumming his fingers together. Rachel looks at him, not understanding what he means. He can't actually be serious. When she had picked him up, Rachel was under the assumption that Finn had a hotel to stay at for however long he was here. Now that he's telling her that he needs a place to stay, she feels like she's going have her car collide with the one ahead of them and her head is going to explode all at the same time.

"Um, Finn, I… sure," she says, giving in to his request. She's not about to leave him out on the street after arriving back home for the first time. "Don't you have other people to stay with?"

"Not really," he tells her, Rachel quirking an eyebrow. She goes through a mental checklist of what her apartment looks like at the moment, and isn't too proud the longer she thinks about it. "I mean, I do, they're just all gone right now. Noah lives in California now, and Quinn… well, I'm not going to stay with Quinn. That would just be awkward."

"Why?"

"Because she's a girl."

"I'm a girl."

He sighs and looks at her, smiling slightly. "Yeah, but… I don't know, Rachel. You're different." She rolls her eyes and does everything in her power not to look at him. Knowing Finn, and if nothing's changed about him since high school, he's looking at her right now with some stupid puppy dog pout stuck to his face, as if it's going to sway her in any way. "Look, I totally get it if you can't, and I can find a hotel right away, I just thought that-"

"No, it's fine," she says, feeling something in her gut tell her that she's making the wrong decision. "Really."

Finn looks at her with a broad smile. "You're sure? Like, you don't have a boyfriend or anything, do you?"

Rachel bites down on her lip and tips her head to the side, trying her best not to look as bitter as she feels. "No," she tells him, shaking her head. "No boyfriend." She wonders if she would even have her boyfriend live with her if she were to have one. Rachel's always wondered what it must feel like to have that kind of relationship with a person; to share a home with them and experience living with them despite the fact that you're not married to them. There's a certain something that comes along with sharing a bed and a bathroom and a DVR that feels so domestic and wonderful and so out of reach to Rachel.

"Great," he tells her, beaming. She knows that he doesn't understand the negative connotation that comes along with what he's saying, but she shrugs it off. "I mean, I only want to do this if you're comfortable with it, Rachel," he tells her, sounding like he's trying to balance on a tightrope. Rachel doesn't understand why he's all of a sudden feeling the need to tread on eggshells while talking to her. She's a normal person that just wants to have a normal conversation with somebody. The fact that it's someone who made her life a living hell for four consecutive years shouldn't have anything to do with it.

_No, I don't want you to stay at my house_, she thinks to herself, the traffic finally beginning to ease up and causing Rachel to step on the accelerator. _You and your friends made fun of me all through high school for not having boobs, so I don't think that would make me want to provide you with shelter for you while you're back at home for whatever reason. _

Part of her wants to do it only because of his leg, but she knows that would just make her sound like a big, stupid sap. Kurt won't be very proud of her once he learns that she's harboring someone who tortured her at one point in her life just for the hell of it. Maybe she should stop being so goddamn maternal when the only person she really has in her life to be maternal towards is Berkley, her cat. Just because she has all of these pent up feelings of wanting to care for and nurture doesn't mean she should allow Finn to stay in her house.

"Um, I'm not going to lie to you though; my apartment's pretty small." She runs over the floor plan of her 550 square-foot apartment in her head, trying to think of a place she can squeeze Finn in without putting herself in a compromising position. "You could sleep on the couch, I guess. It's not really a couch, I guess, it's more of a futon, so you can pull it out at night and it turns into a bed." She's started to ramble now, making her want to tear her hair out. Whether or not she likes Finn, Rachel doesn't want to come across like a complete moron. "So, you know. If that's alright, then you can-"

"That's fine," he tells her, not tearing his eyes away from her. Rachel wishes that he would just look out the window or down in his lap or at his phone, or something. Anything but looking at her right now would be fabulous. "I mean, I don't want to impose on you or whatever, Rachel." She turns to face him and smiles softly, maybe the first real smile she's bothered to offer him since his plane has touched down in Lima.

"Well, we'll just get you all settled, then."


	2. Chapter 2: Then

McKinley High School was just like any other high school. It didn't have a heated football field with a retractable dome like the one in Grand Ledge, and the cheerleaders and football players didn't intermingle with the members of the chess club and the choir kids, like all of the high schools on TV shows or in movies. McKinley High School was just like any other high school in the Lima area: a predominantly white student body, middle to lower middle class, and an organization of cliques so complicated it could easily trump the Caste system.

You figured out which clique you belonged to by the third week of your freshman year, even though the majority of your status in the middle school pecking order transferred over with you. There weren't any discrepancies from the expected order of power; athletes and cheerleaders still coming out on top with the prize by graduation day. They were the ones that everyone secretly wanted to be, whether they would admit to it or not. Even if someone was happy with the group of friends that they chose to associate themselves with, they all secretly wanted that recognition and fame with the school that came with joining the ranks of those who would actually be remembered once their days in high school came to an end.

Middle school was where the students always seemed to figure out the pecking order amongst themselves, with little to no help from the outside world. Little things like whether or not you wore clothes from the right brands, like Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister played an important role in how well-liked you were and how 'relevant' you were compared to the high school students at the time, who seemed to be in a league of their own compared to the middle school students. Little things, like whether or not someone still carried a lunchbox with a cartoon character on it or if they swore openly in the hallway weren't detrimental in determining how popular they would become, but played a bigger role in the long run.

Finn always thought that it was because he brought his lunch in a paper bag and Rachel still used the Scooby-Doo lunchbox she did in elementary school. That was the only real reason why he became popular in elementary school and she didn't.

Finn was one of the lucky ones. He had always been – or at least since middle school, anyway. Joining the freshman football team upon his arrival at McKinley didn't hinder him in any way, and before he knew it, he was going out on dates with the girls who were allowed to wear makeup that let them look like Britney Spears in her latest music video. Finn went to all of the parties where people drank and the occasional person would bring a Ziploc bag of weed, but it was never anything serious. At least that was what he would tell himself on his drive back home.

Rachel just existed in high school. She was a person that he knew existed still and wandered the hallways with everyone else every time the bell rang, but she never had the same presence in Finn's life that she once did back when they went to elementary school together. She had never really caught his eye until the end of their sophomore year, when she had been invited to sing the national anthem at one of the home baseball games. Finn had just gotten his driver's license and was able to drive everywhere (well, everywhere within a ten mile radius of his house to begin with), and most of his free time was spent going to the sporting events at school that he had never really had a chance to go to because of his mother's unwillingness to drive him to the school and back more than three times a week.

No one really thought that Rachel was important, but that was just because none of Finn's friends really knew who she was. It was kind of difficult to know who people were when they never went to the same parties they did.

"I think it's kind of stupid how you haven't asked out Quinn yet," Puck said to Finn the night of the baseball game. It was spring, the end of their sophomore year soon approaching them. With the end of sophomore year came more milestones than the students graduating that year – or, at least it seemed that way to the sophomores. The following year, they would be becoming upperclassmen, and would be granted access to all of the privilege that would come with it, like being able to leave campus for lunch and sitting on the good side of the gymnasium during pep fests – and, of course, prom. "I mean, she's into you. Why do you think she asked to be your lab partner?"

Finn looked at Puck and smiled to himself, not wanting to seem like he knew what Puck was talking about. It was true; he knew how Quinn Fabray was practically throwing herself on him in order to get his attention, but it wasn't like she really needed to do anything to catch his eye already. Quinn was beautiful; alabaster skin and golden blonde hair with sparkling blue eyes that made her look like she had been torn directly out of a fashion magazine. She was one of the only sophomore girls that had been promoted to the varsity cheer team in the fall, which made her hit among the football players and a target for mockery among the freshman and junior varsity cheerleaders. Finn didn't really see how it affected her, however, because every time Quinn walked down the hall, she looked the same – poised and perfect and effortless. The jaws of boys would hit the floor with an audible crash and the analytical eyes of girls would try to calculate just exactly how she swayed her hips from side to side when she made her way from geometry to US history.

"I don't know," Finn said, shoving his hands in his pockets. Right now, he was like any other guy he knew, and was more concerned about the food he had ordered at the concession booth than whatever Puck was talking about – even if it was about a hot girl. "I mean, I just don't want to ask her out and have her say no, you know what I mean?" Finn had never really asked a girl out before, but he didn't think that it would be that hard. He knew that he wasn't ugly or anything, and he played for the football team. For some reason, being a football player at McKinley somehow made you prime dating material. He had already experienced the clamor of girls that rushed up to him come February when the Sadie Hawkins dance came up. "I mean, if she's going to ask me, why doesn't she just ask me now?" His bag of popcorn and large soda appeared in the window of the concession booth, causing Finn to grab at them eagerly. "I don't get why she's playing hard to get or whatever."

Puck laughed to himself and looked at Finn before reaching across him for a fistful of popcorn. "Because that's how girls work," he told him coolly. Puck suddenly sounded like he knew all about how girls at their school operated. "They pretend like they're not interested in you or whatever, and then, once you ask them out, they're all yours." Finn rolled his eyes and sighed, spotting a place on the bleachers for the two of them to sit.

"Right, because you're dating Santana, you know everything about dating and stuff." Puck had 'dated' Santana Lopez since the eighth grade, but they hadn't started seriously dating until the fall of their sophomore year. The two of them sat down and looked out onto the baseball diamond, the stadium lights getting switched on along with the scoreboard. "I'll ask her tomorrow, I swear," he promised, not really promising anything at all. Finn wasn't even sure if he liked Quinn. She was hot, but he had never really talked to her before. Quinn was the kind of girl who was intimidating to everyone, no matter who they were.

An announcement came on the speaker system and the entire crowd stood for the National Anthem, Finn's eyes looking down at the baseball field as a girl walked onto it. Whoever was doing announcements didn't announce her name or anything, they just let her walk on with her portable microphone in hand and stand there, smiling brightly. She looked so sure of herself, pride and excitement glowing from every pore on her body. The longer he spent staring at her, the more Finn realized that he knew who she was. She really wasn't anyone memorable, but he at least recognized her face.

Puck noticed Finn's eyes divert to the girl that had walked onto the home plate of the baseball diamond and was now looking out into the bleachers, like she was smiling at someone specific.

"What are you staring at her like that for?" He asked, laughing slightly to himself. "Who is that, anyway? I don't think I've ever seen her before."

Finn looked at Puck and rolled his eyes. He didn't understand why it was such a big deal to look at her. Clearly, she wanted people to be looking at her. She was going to be singing the National Anthem in front of a bunch of people. Attention was exactly what she wanted.

"I don't know her name," he said, grabbing another handful of popcorn from the tub sitting in his lap. "She's in my homeroom, though. All she does is talk to Kurt Hummel or read a book when he's not there."

He watched her as she tapped on the head of the microphone and started speaking, not really paying attention to what she was saying. Her voice echoed from the sound system across the field, but she didn't sound the slightest bit nervous. Finn wondered if it was because she was used to singing in front of big groups of people or something. He never went to the choir concerts or musicals. He didn't care.

He couldn't really tell what she was talking about. Something about the spring musical and how everyone should go see it because she's a sophomore and sophomores usually don't even get cast in the spring musical and it's a really big deal and it's really good and tickets are only six dollars.

"She seems like a pill," Puck said, rolling his eyes. Finn wanted to laugh along with him and smile like it was one big joke, because it really was. He didn't need to feel any kind of attachment or sympathy for whoever this girl was. She was just there, and he knew that she existed. He could easily go through the rest of his life just seeing her in homeroom, occasionally hearing her gush about the musical or whatever song she got to sing a solo in for show choir that week.

But she wasn't one of those girls that were completely avoidable. She was pretty, and not like Quinn or any of her friends. She had long, dark hair and wore a teal dress that wasn't like the ones Quinn would wear, but instead had a back and sleeves and buttoned up in the front. She looked like a nice girl, and Finn was surprised that he had never really noticed her before.

He could see himself talking to her next Monday in homeroom, maybe. She seemed like a nice enough person.

She started to sing and Finn watched as Puck pulled out his phone, becoming more interested in whatever text he had gotten than the girl singing in front of them. He didn't really mind if people weren't watching her; he didn't feel any kind of emotion towards her like he thought he was supposed to. Maybe he was supposed to fall head over heels in love with her just because her voice, or the way she smiled in between the verses of the song, but he didn't.

He wasn't Heath Ledger and the girl singing wasn't Julia Stiles. They weren't going to fall in love with each other just because she was singing and had caught his attention. They were just two people, and Finn had happened to notice her. That was it.

"She's pretty good," he said, looking over at Puck. He wasn't lying. She was really good. It was no wonder she had been cast in the musical that only had two parts in it that spring. Puck didn't seem to care.

"She's got a nice ass," Puck said off-handedly, looking up at his phone for a moment. Finn shouldn't have expected any better from him. He was telling the truth, anyway. Whoever the girl was that was now both in his homeroom and singing the National Anthem did have a nice ass. He wasn't going to deny that just because he didn't know her.

"Yeah," he said, not really bothering to pay attention to Puck by his side. The girl had finished singing and walked off of the baseball field, finding her way onto the bleachers and sitting down next to Kurt, the boy she spent so much time talking to during homeroom. "Hey, the game's starting."

He looked at the girl for a while longer, watching her as she grabbed a bucket of popcorn from Kurt's lap and took a handful from it, counting the pieces out in the palm of her hand before beginning to eat them. She tipped her head up from her lap and locked her eyes with Finn for a second, noticing the way he stared at her. A small smile appeared on her face and she brushed her hair from her face, waving at him for a moment.

Finn looked away from her, looking back out onto the baseball field. She looked like the type who would get too excited about seeing someone wave at her, of all things. He wasn't in the mood to start that kind of relationship with anyone. He was supposed to be dating Quinn, anyway.

:.:.:

The baseball game went over fine. They were winning by the seventh inning, which was when Finn had decided to get up and buy a drink.

He hadn't noticed the girl who had sung the National Anthem standing next to him in line.

"Hi Finn," she said, blushing slightly. She was a lot prettier now that he was standing so close to her. She had big, brown eyes and a smile that seemed to light up under the dim lights of the concession booth. "How are you?"

He was surprised that she knew his name. Finn knew that he was considered popular by most people in their class, but he wouldn't have expected her to know what his name was. He looked at her, somewhat confused. She continued to look at him, fingering the hem of her dress nervously.

"Hey," he said, not wanting to sound like a complete jerk. He didn't even know what her name was. He knew that they had announced it before she sang and everything, but he wasn't really listening then. He didn't have any classes with her and he had never really gone to a performance of any of the musicals or anything. He had just recognized her from his homeroom.

No matter how many times he looked at her, however, she still seemed familiar to him, like he had seen her before.

She looked at him for a moment, furrowing her brow as he assumed she thought he was trying to recall her name. He couldn't, really, no matter how hard he tried.

"Rachel," she said, wiping her hands off on her dress. "We're in homeroom together." She giggled softly to herself and looked down at her feet, her yellow shoes sticking out against the concrete. "And, um, we went to elementary school together."

Finn felt like an idiot. He didn't want to ask her how he knew her, because he figured that would just sound rude. "Oh, yeah, Rachel!" He smiled at her and she smiled back, laughing as he looked at her. "Yeah, um, you did a really good job out there," he told her as began to rub the back of his neck. "I didn't know you could sing like that, or anything."

"You should come see me in the musical," she told him, blushing slightly. "We're doing _The Last 5 Years_. It's really good."

Finn had no clue what that musical was, but he figured that Rachel must have been pretty good if she had been cast in it. "Yeah, um, I'll try and see it," he told her, walking up further in line. She was still behind someone else by the time he had reached the counter. Finn reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

"I'll buy you whatever you were going to get here, if you want."

She looked at him with a smile and giggled again, making him feel like his heart was beating faster. Finn had never really heard a laugh like Rachel's before. It played on a musical scale and sounded like she was singing a song while she laughed.

"Oh," she said, her voice quiet. "Finn, you don't really need to do that-"

"It's fine," he said with a laugh, smiling down at her. He had never really noticed how much shorter she was than he was. He figured that she was at least a foot shorter than he was, but it played up how cute she seemed to him. She wasn't hot or unapproachable like Quinn and her friends were; put up on pedestals for everyone to envy and want even though they knew they wouldn't be able to date them or consider speaking to them without getting the cold shoulder. Rachel was just beautiful, and not because she wore a bunch of makeup or dresses that looked like they were a size too small for her. Finn hadn't really met a girl like Rachel before.

"What were you going to get?"

"Oh, um, red licorice," she said bashfully. "Kurt and I were going to share a bag." She turned over her shoulder and gestured at Kurt, who she waved at with a smile. There was a beat between them, Rachel kicking her feet around nervously.

"You know, Finn, I'm sure you've already got people to sit with, or whatever, but, um, if you wanted to sit with me, um, that would be-"

"Finn," a voice rang above Rachel's, causing Finn to turn around. Over his shoulder was Quinn, standing behind him with a smirk on his face. He felt his stomach tie itself in a knot and his mouth went dry.

He looked back at Rachel, who had looked down at her feet. She looked nervous and had crossed her arms over her chest, holding onto herself tightly.

Quinn's lips curled into a sneer and she rolled her eyes. "What is she doing here?" Finn looked back at Quinn and his mouth dropped open slightly, surprised by how rude she was being. Finn wasn't even dating Quinn or anything, and she was being rude to Rachel. He wasn't even sure if she had ever met Rachel, considering he really hadn't before he had run into her at the concession booth.

"Quinn, this is Rachel… Rachel Berry?"

"Yeah, I know who she is," Quinn sneered, rolling her eyes. "She's in my history class."

Rachel looked up at Finn, her voice suddenly quiet.

"Finn, it's okay. You can leave."

He looked at her and watched her as she turned towards the counter, ignoring him. Finn didn't really know what to say to her, of if he would be able to say anything to her after Quinn had snapped at him in the way she had.

"What are you doing here?" He asked Quinn, surprised that she was there. He never would have thought that she would have been at the same game he and Puck had gone to. It wasn't like she was cheering at it or anything.

"I came with Santana because she got bored," the blonde said, still looking over her shoulder at Rachel, who had preoccupied herself at the concessions counter. Finn looked at her and Quinn scoffed, rolling her eyes as she cast one last look at Rachel. "Why were you spending time with her?" She asked, her voice stern. Finn wasn't even dating her and Quinn had already wanted to know every little detail about what he was doing.

"Who, Rachel?" Finn looked over his shoulder at Rachel, who was already making her way back to the bleachers with her package of licorice in her hand. "She's kind of cool, Quinn."

Quinn started to laugh. "Please," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "She's a no one. She spends all of her time talking about musicals and singers and stuff no one cares about and it's disgusting," she said, shooting a glare over in Rachel's direction. "And look, I get that you think she's pretty and everything, but she's not really anything to write home about." Finn's eyes fell on Rachel in the bleachers, no longer smiling the way she had been before Quinn had come into the picture. Her eyes looked down in her lap and she didn't even look happy when Kurt tried to talk to her. "She could spare to lose a few pounds, anyway."

Finn looked over at Rachel again, feeling his heart stammer slightly. She suddenly looked so sad and ashamed while she sat next to Kurt, looking at him with sadness in her eyes. She had become the girl he knew that she wasn't, even if he was just taking a refresher course in meeting her again.

Part of him wanted to go up to her and tell her that Quinn was just a jerk, and that he didn't really believe any of the things she had said about her. Maybe Rachel would forgive him and wouldn't think that he was such an asshole.

But the dominant part of him turned back around to face Quinn, a crooked smile stuck to his face.

"Come on," the blonde said, a smile stuck to her face. She looped her arm through his and dragged him away from the concession booth before he was able to get the drink he had gone up there to get in the first place. "Let's go sit back down before the game starts again."

He did as he was told, dumbfounded. He cared about Rachel, really.

He just didn't care about her right in that second.


	3. Chapter 3: Now

"I think you're crazy," Kurt tells her that night. Normally, Rachel would use this time to roll her eyes or laugh at him, but she knows that isn't just telling her that she's crazy for the fun of it. It's starting to get to the point where she wonders herself if she's actually certifiable.

Maybe she's lost all lucidness in this event of letting Finn stay with her.

"I'm not crazy," she says, still sounding nervous. She's sounded shaken up all day. Ever since she woke up and knew that one of the things she had to do was pick Finn up from the airport, she's felt like complete shit. Berkley doesn't even make her feel better. "I'm just being hospitable, that's all."

"Rachel, 'hospitable' is like the time you took in Berkley. 'Hospitable' is inviting a homeless person to your house on Thanksgiving so you can give them a warm meal. Letting Finn Hudson stay at your house until some undefined date isn't exactly what I would call 'hospitable.'" Kurt looks at her and sighs, stirring his salad with his fork. "What even made you want to say yes?"

She shrugs; the question rolling around in her head for a while. She knows that deep down, Kurt's right. She should have given Finn what he had coming to him ever since their sophomore year in high school. Her dads had always told her that people would 'get what they give,' and her denying Finn the right to stay at her apartment would be like her serving up a piping hot plate of karma right in Finn's face.

Of course, in the moment, she didn't have the heart to tell him anything like that. She doesn't really know where else he would have stayed. As far as she's concerned, he's unable to stay with his mother and Quinn and Puck are gone. Maybe he doesn't have a friend in the world right now and he's using Rachel as some kind of support system because hey, he knows her.

That and he probably thinks that she knows all about not having any friends to depend on. He's probably under the impression that she doesn't have any friends. It was the way he acted while they were in high school.

"I felt bad, okay?" She spears a tomato with her fork and looks up at Kurt, her fingers twisting into a fist around the fork. (Part of her tells herself that she should imagine that the tomato is Finn's head and she's actually driving a fork into his scalp instead of a tomato, but it reminds her of some kind of voodoo practice and she pushes the thought out of her mind.) "The way he was talking about everything made it sound like he didn't have anywhere else to stay, and I wasn't going to be a jerk and put him out on the street or anything."

"Surely he has enough money for a hotel, or something."

She makes a face and pops the tomato in her mouth. "I don't think so," she tells Kurt, holding her napkin up to her face. "I don't think he has much money, Kurt. He just got out of the army."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't know," she tells him, dumbfounded. Maybe being in the army doesn't do anything to your financial status, but Rachel's always thought that it would. "He's probably got hospital bills that are through the roof or something, though. He got shot in the leg, Kurt."

Kurt leans back in his chair in the dimly lit restaurant, the candle at their table casting a haunting shadow against his face that makes him look like the villain from the _Scream _movies for a moment, frightening Rachel for a second. "You sound like you're going to let some idiot who made your life a living hell mooch off of you and your shoestring salary just because he called you one afternoon on a whim." He looks at her, a small pout stuck to his face. "I just want you to be careful, Rachel." Kurt pushes his salad around on his plate for a moment, trying to buy time while he speaks to her. "He hurt you once already. I don't think you want him to hurt you again."

She looks down into her lap, feeling her heart beating in her throat. Kurt's right and she knows that he is, she just doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that she's wrong.

"I know," she says, her voice soft and almost inaudible. "I just… nothing's going to happen, Kurt. He's going to stay for a few weeks and then once he finds a job or something, I'm going to tell him to go find a hotel room." She speaks as if she's confident and secure with her decisions, even though she's just now made them up in her mind. "I can make decisions for myself, you know. I _am _an adult."

She giggles slightly and Kurt follows after her, smiling as she looks up at him.

"Oh, believe me, I know." She laughs and flips her hair over her shoulder, slowly starting to regain her confidence. Maybe having Finn stay at her apartment won't turn her life into her own personal hell on earth. There seems to be something redeeming about him, even if Kurt refuses to believe her.

She doesn't really feel anything for him emotionally, however. He just doesn't seem like the asshole he once was.

"So what's he doing now?" Kurt asks, looking at Rachel again. "I'm sure you didn't trust him alone in your apartment. Please tell me you hired a babysitter, Rachel. For Berkley's sake."

Rachel erupts in a fit of giggles and takes another bite of her salad. "He's unpacking," she says. "Well, either that or trying to figure out how the TV works, but I'm pretty sure he's unpacking." She smiles to herself, thinking back to how Finn had been when she had left him. She wonders if he's able to get around her apartment with his crutches alright, but she chooses not to let her mind stay on the topic for too long. Too much time and she'll become worried over him and want to leave, which is exactly what she doesn't want.

"I would hide all of the embarrassing things you own if I were you," Kurt warns her. "What if he finds all of those expired condoms in your underwear drawer?"

Kurt begins to snicker at his own joke and Rachel kicks at his leg from underneath the table, furrowing her brow. "Shut up," she says, rolling her eyes. "That was one time, Kurt, and you know it."

"Oh, you're right, I'm sorry. Forgive me for bringing up the time you thought it wouldn't be awkward to stash extra-small condoms in your underwear drawer."

"I didn't read the label on the box," she protests, wanting to avoid the subject all together. "Besides, at least I was buying condoms. Most girls don't."

"I thought you were an adult now?"

She rolls her eyes and smiles, shaking her head from side to side.

"Shut up."

Kurt leans down on the table, resting his head in his hands. "Well, I think you'll be okay," he tells her with a smile. "I would just consider investing in a nanny cam just to make sure he isn't looking through your things or taking anything when you go out."

Rachel laughs and wipes her hands on her napkin. "Alright, mom."

She thinks that she can handle this. Just because it's Finn and she and him have never, ever been on good terms doesn't mean that the next few weeks are going to become her worst nightmare. She's just going to have to figure out how to swallow her pride and get along with him.

If that's even possible, anyway.

:.:.:

She walks over to the doors to her building the way she had learned in college; her keys in a fist with the car key sticking out so she can make sure to be at the ready to stab anyone if they try to attack her one the short walk from the parking garage to her apartment building.

It's happened before, and Rachel knows that she is very vulnerable and very cute, so she chooses not to take any chances.

A kind of fear consumes her as she steps into the elevator and rides it all the way up to the floor her apartment is on, wondering how Finn's fared while she's been gone. Surely he hasn't destroyed her apartment, and he hasn't hurt Berkley in any way or anything.

She really doesn't think that he's the monster Kurt thinks he is. Of course, she can see why he thinks that way, and parts of her still agree with him, but for the most part, Finn has turned back into a normal person.

It's like he was the Hulk while they were in high school and his only goal in life was to make her life miserable. Maybe now that he's been shot in the leg, his skin is less green and he's slowly turning back into a normal person.

Rachel slowly turns the key to the door and opens it up, sticking her head in sheepishly. She has no real reason to be afraid, really. It's not like she's let a hardened criminal into her house.

She pulls the door shit behind her and drops her keys in the fishbowl on the side table nearby. Her eyes catch on a blue suitcase lying on her couch, a pile of clothes springing up from it. Berkley's already sitting down in it and is glaring up at her when she walks in, his tail waving back and forth behind his back.

Rachel walks up to the couch and pushes him off of Finn's clothes, her shove quickly followed by a snarl. She's sure that Finn doesn't want her cat lying on top of his clothes before he even gets the chance to wear them.

Of course, if it were Kurt calling the shots, he would probably tell her to line Berkley's litter box with Finn's clothes.

She doesn't want to be mean to him. It's not in her nature to lash out at someone for no reason. Granted, she's always been somewhat immature and childish, but Rachel likes to think that she's outgrown that fault for the most part. She should be able to oversee what Finn's done to her in high school.

Besides, it's not like he had continued to treat her that way after graduating. On graduation day, Rachel knew that she would be going to the University of Ohio thinking that she would never have to see Finn Hudson ever again.

Going to the University of Ohio was never something she had planned, so she wasn't really surprised when seeing Finn again ended up being a promise she couldn't keep for herself.

She's never really had much luck when it comes to actually getting what she wants.

Rachel doesn't hear anything for a long time, which makes her wonder if Finn's doing alright. He is on crutches, after all. For all she knows, he might have fallen down while she's been out to dinner with Kurt and now he's just lying on the floor somewhere in her apartment, knocked unconscious due to all of the pain he's experiencing.

Alright, so she's being dramatic. Sue her.

Still, she figures that she should check in on him. It would only be the proper thing for a good hostess to do.

"Finn?" She calls, her loud and clarion voice carrying through the small apartment. Saying his name without some kind of spite attached to it still doesn't feel natural to her. "I'm home."

She is not Lucille Ball and he is not Ricky Ricardo. She shouldn't have to do this in the first place.

The familiar sound of his crutches fills the small hallway from the living room to her bedroom, his body casting a large shadow against the pale cream walls. By the time Finn is standing in front of her, he's got a dumbfounded smile stuck to his face. He's changed his clothes, too; no longer wearing his military uniform and instead dressed in a pair of track pants with a black t shirt and a purple hoodie.

(Part of her thanks every god that he's managed to change his clothes by himself. She's not about to become his live-in nurse – nor is she going to run the risk of seeing Finn in his underwear.)

"Hey," he says, looking down at her as she pulls her jacket off. She tips her head up to look at him warily, sighing slightly. "Sorry, I was just looking for the bed sheets."

"They're in the bathroom," she tells him, not bothering to really pay much attention to him or his smile or his leg. Rachel pushes past him slightly as she makes her way down the short hallway to her bathroom, flipping the light on and opening up the cabinet next to the bathtub, pulling out a handful of neatly folded pink bed sheets.

"Wow," Finn says, suppressing a slight smile. She notices him eyeing up the sheets as she brings them back out to the living room and tosses them down on the couch. "Everything you own is pink, isn't it?"

She makes a face and scowls, trying to hide it from him as best as possible.

"How would you know that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was just kind of looking around, I guess." He pauses, laughing to himself and adjusting his posture on his crutches. "Well, that, and you've kind of loved pink for as long as I can remember."

Rachel can't help but smile slightly at the fact that he remembers that, but she knows that it might also be because while she was gone, he had snuck around her apartment and seen all of the pink things she owned.

(Her mind races to the expired condoms Kurt had brought up over dinner, the very thought of Finn finding them causing her face to redden. She makes a mental note to herself to throw all of those again just in case Finn decides to take a glance in her underwear drawer while she's at work or something.)

"Yeah," she says, finding that it's the only word she knows how to use now. She's not really in the mood to talk to him, or anyone, for that matter. All Rachel really wants to do right now is go to sleep so she can have a dream about something that has nothing to do with the day she's had so far.

She bends over and undoes the latch on the side of the couch, causing it to flip backwards and turn into more of a mattress than a couch. Quickly, she begins unfolding the pink plaid sheets and lays them down on the couch, preparing to make it for him since she figures he can't really do much with his leg and crutches and all.

Finn sits down in the chair nearby in the corner of her eye and she sighs, blowing her bangs out of her eyes as she stretches the fitted sheet over the couch.

"So, um… how long have you had your cat?" She hears Finn ask, clearly trying to make conversation. Rachel's eyes fall down to her feet, where Berkley is currently walking around. She smiles.

"Who, Berkley?" She smiles for a moment before finally making it over the edge of the couch with the sheet she's been struggling with. She lands on the couch on her stomach, scrambling off of it and sitting down before grabbing Berkley in her hands and pulling him up into her lap. "Um, about two years now. I found him in the alley behind the building."

Finn looks at her and smiles, causing her to look back up at him with a smile of her own.

She doesn't want to seem like she's having a good time spending all of this time with Finn and actually talking to him, but she is.

"And you named him Berkley?"

"No," she says with a laugh. "He was wearing a tag that said Berkley on it, but when I had tried to call the number on it, it had been disconnected." She looks down at Berkley and smiles, petting him as she speaks.

Finn laughs and she giggles along with him, knowing that the inevitable silence is to follow. She doesn't know what to talk about with him. Should she bring up how she doesn't understand why he wants to stay with her, of all people, or should she ask him why he thought it would be the best idea to make her life some kind of hell on earth while they had known each other?

Her hands work their way through Berkley's fur, the cocktail ring she's worn for the night catching in his collar.

"Well, I'm going to go to bed," she says abruptly, standing to her feet as Berkley jumps down from her lap and scampers off to her room. "Um, I brought a few blankets out for you, but I have extras in the hall closet if you need any." Her eyes dart around the room quickly, doing everything in her power to ignore him and his gaze.

She picks up the remote and hands it to him, not bothering to smile in the slightest. "You can turn the TV on, if you want, and there's a list on the coffee table of all of the channels and their numbers. The ones that are highlighted are the ones that I actually get." Rachel looks over at the small, yellowed piece of paper, knowing that Finn won't be impressed by the Lifetime network or E! or the Style network. She doesn't have any of the sports channels that she knows he probably wants to be watching right now.

Some hostess she's turning out to be.

"Oh, and Berkley likes to get up and walk around at night, so don't be surprised if he tries to sleep with you or something. He's a very tactile cat."

Finn looks up at her from his chair with a furrowed brow.

"It means he likes to be touched. You know, held and pet and all of that."

"Oh," Finn says. "That's no problem, Rachel."

She doesn't like how nice he's being to her right now. It makes her think that he's just getting ready to release some kind of cruelty on her tomorrow – over breakfast or something.

Rachel begins to make the walk to her bedroom, silently praying that Finn won't bother to say anything before she makes it into her room. If she's in her room, she can close the door and be alone with her TV and her cat.

"Oh, and Rachel?"

Shit.

She turns around and smiles at Finn, seeing him pulling a blanket over the couch. "Good night."

She was expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

"Good night, Finn."

She tells herself that maybe staying with Finn won't be the worst thing in the world. It can be like a re-do of their relationship. She can cook him dinner and he can give her recommendations on what to watch on Netflix or whatever. They can have a completely platonic and tolerable relationship with one another if she actually tries.

Rachel just doesn't know if she's willing to try that hard right away, however. After all, it is Finn.

Maybe she should wait and see if he's actually serious about everything before she tries to befriend him.


	4. Chapter 4: Then

It was only a matter of time before Puck moved on from Santana. At least, that's what he had told Finn had happened. It was pretty believable, actually; Puck went through girls at their school like they were tissues he blew his nose in. Finn expected the impending break-up of Puck and Santana to happen a lot sooner than it did.

Of course, he wasn't exactly expecting it to happen for the reasons that it did.

"She basically came up to me and told me that she was more interested in girls than me," Puck told Finn one afternoon. The school day had just ended and Finn and Puck had just gotten out of US history, the only class they had together.

Finn hated history. He understood the point of learning about important battles and leaders and whatever; he just didn't want to learn about it.

Finn leaned against the locker next to Puck's and nodded along absentmindedly. He wasn't paying much attention to what Puck was saying. Puck and Santana breaking up was one of those inevitable things that he figured was going to happen at some point, he just didn't know when.

"Woah," he deadpanned, zoning out as he looked down the hallway. "That sucks, man." Finn didn't really care all too much. Listening to Puck complain about the girls he slept with and how they had suddenly decided to become lesbians overnight or whatever wasn't how he wanted to spend the last week before their sophomore year was over.

"Who's she dating now, then?" Finn tried his best to actually seem interested in what Puck was talking about, no matter how grueling of a process that was.

"Brittany ," Puck said, spitting her name out like it was poison.

Finn couldn't help but smile. Santana and Brittany had been best friends for as long as he had known them. He couldn't really see the two of them becoming girlfriends, or whatever, but the thought of them making out with one another was kind of hot.

He just wasn't going to let Puck know that he thought that, that was all.

There was a beat between them and Puck shut his locker, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

"It's not a complete loss, though," he said, his mouth curling up into a mischievous smile. Finn looked at him, worried that he was going to say something disgusting or something in the same vein.

"What are you talking about?"

"Remember that girl that sang at the baseball game?"

_Oh, shit, _Finn thought to himself. _Rachel._

"What?" Finn asked, trying to sound distracted. "Um, no. Why?"

"Because she seems like a nice person, Finn." Puck rolled his eyes and the two started to make their way down the hallway. "No, do you think I'm stupid or something?" Finn looked down at Puck and felt something in his chest tighten. "I'm just going to sleep with her and then the school year's going to be over. Big deal."

Finn looked at Puck, trying to keep himself from saying anything he knew he would regret. He knew that if he said anything about how objectifying Rachel was a bad thing, Puck would just roll his eyes and tell him that he was being stupid for actually considering the feelings of a girl he didn't know that well.

Puck wasn't lying when it came to that. Finn didn't really know all too much about Rachel. She seemed kind of elusive to him in that the only real interaction that he had with her was at the baseball game. They didn't have any classes together and they didn't talk to one another in the hallway when they walked past each other.

There was something about Rachel that intimidated him for some reason. She seemed like she knew what she wanted and would stop at nothing to get it, and that frightened him for some reason. Rachel was headstrong and proactive and so unlike the rest of the girls that they went to school with.

She could probably be the President if she wanted to.

"That's cool," he told Puck, feeling like he wanted to throw up. He didn't think it was cool at all. There was a small part of him that wanted to tell Puck all about how what he was doing was wrong, and how maybe if he wanted to be respected by girls other than the ones who would just put out for him whenever he wanted, he should treat them like actual people instead of objects.

Of course, that was just Puck operated.

"You think she'd be up for it?" Puck asked, actually curious as to whether or not she would. Finn shrugged slightly, unsure of what to say. He didn't want Puck to actually try and date Rachel, because he knew that she wouldn't be completely opposed to the idea. Every girl wanted a boyfriend, whether they were willing to admit to it or not. Finn just didn't want Rachel to be stuck with Puck, that was all.

"Um, yeah," he told him, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Go for it, man."

Finn knew that it wasn't smart to actually tell Puck to go ahead and try to ask Rachel out, because he knew what her answer would be. It wasn't that Rachel seemed like one of those insecure girls that needed a boyfriend, but every time he saw her, the more she looked like the type that wanted to hold hands with a guy as she walked down the hallway just so she could feel some kind of sense of reassurance from him.

And clearly, Finn wasn't the correct person to fill those shoes.

But Puck wasn't either.

:.:.:

"Did you hear about the party that Puck's throwing on the last day of school?" Finn and Quinn say together in biology one day, watching a movie because the teacher had run out of curriculum to go over before the final exam.

Finn looked at Quinn suspiciously, arching an eyebrow. There was no way that Puck was throwing a party all by himself – there was too much work that was put into actually throwing a party and Finn knew that Puck would never want to have any part in that.

"Well, he's hosting it at that one girl's house. The short one?"

"Rachel?" Finn asked, not bothering to get angry with Quinn for not knowing Rachel's name. Finn let the thought mull over in his head before he put everything together. Puck must have already asked Rachel out and she had probably already said yes, just like how he had expected.

"Yeah," Quinn said, not bothering to look up at him from her lap. She had her phone pulled out and was texting someone underneath her desk. "I guess she thinks that she's his girlfriend now or something, so he convinced her to throw a big end-of-the-year party at her house while her dads are out of town." She let a sigh slip through her lips and she tipped her head up to look at Finn. "Pretty pathetic, if you ask me."

Finn didn't want to say anything to Quinn, knowing that it would begin an argument between the two of them. He didn't see why people didn't like Rachel as much as they did. She was nice to people – or at least nice to him, anyway, and she was a really good singer. She was really pretty too- or at least Finn thought so. Not in a Quinn kind of pretty, but in her own way, or whatever.

"So are you going?" He asked, wondering if he supposed to be going. Puck hadn't told him anything about it. Puck hadn't even told him about how he and Rachel were apparently dating, so maybe he wasn't supposed to know about the party, either.

"Of course I'm going," Quinn said, suppressing a laugh. "And miss out on that mess getting drunk and embarrassing herself?" She laughed, almost maniacally. "I wouldn't miss that for the world."

Finn looked at Quinn, feeling frustration boil up inside his stomach. "Isn't that a little rude?" He asked, furrowing his brow. "I mean, Rachel never did anything to you, Quinn. You don't need to make fun of her just for the fun of it."

Quinn rolled her eyes and laughed as she looked back at Finn. "Oh my God, it's not like it matters, or anything. She doesn't know." She glared at him; Finn watching as she slowly became angrier with him. "I don't see why you care so much about her. She's just another person we go to school with. It's not like she's ever done anything for you."

Finn looked away from Quinn and up towards the screen in front of the classroom. "Because she's a person," he told her, lowering his voice even more. "And she's nice to me, Quinn."

The blonde rolled her eyes and began to drum her fingers against the table.

"Whatever," she said, rolling her eyes and looking away from Finn. "We're going to that party, Finn. It'll be fun, or whatever." She started to tap her pencil against the side of her desk and looked at Finn again, smiling to herself. "Besides, you'll get to spend all of your time with that Rachel girl. You two seem like you're starting to become friends, or whatever."

Finn looked at Quinn and sighed. "Why does she matter so much to you?"

"Just stop trying to spend time with her," she quipped. "She's not that impressive, anyway."

:.:.:

Finn thought it was best to make every decision tentatively from the moment he and Quinn stepped out of his car in front of Rachel's house. Her house was much farther away from his than he would have guessed; she lived closer to where Quinn lived, where all of the houses looked the same and the grass was supposed to be cut to a specific length. Cars were parked in front of it and lined the streets, but by looking at the house, it was hard to tell that a party was going on.

"Maybe she told everybody to leave," Quinn joked, walking up to Finn and grabbing him by the hand. "Or she's having everyone listen to her sing along to some stupid show tune."

Finn bit his tongue as Quinn took him by the hand. He didn't want to make her upset for the evening by challenging her about Rachel once again.

The two of them approached the front door of Rachel's house, Finn grabbing the knocker and hitting it against the door a few times.

It didn't take long until the door was swung open; Finn and Quinn met with Rachel standing in front of them, smiling ear to ear.

"Finn," she said, her voice light and happy. It made Finn smile himself, not noticing the look stuck to his girlfriend's face. "I didn't know you were coming."

Finn stood there in the doorway, lost for words.

"We both came," Quinn finally interjected, pushing her way through the doorway and inside Rachel's house. "I told him it would be stupid if we missed out on the biggest party of the year, right?" She cocked her head to the side and gave Rachel a smirk, shoving her purse into her chest as she walked past her.

"Come on, Finn," she said, her back turned to the both of them. Finn watched as she walked away and turned the corner, suddenly out of sight. He looked down at Rachel, who had turned over her shoulder to watch Quinn walk away. She held her purse in her hands like she was unsure as to what to do with it, eyes wide as she turned around to look at him again.

"Hey," he said, trying his best not to start smiling like an idiot. Rachel had that effect on him like no one else he knew did, and Finn couldn't figure out why.

"Hey," she said, biting down on her lip as she smiled at him. Her hair started to fall in her eyes and Rachel moved her hand to push it out of her face. "You should have told me that you were coming."

Finn felt his face begin to flush and he shoved his hands in his pockets nervously. "I didn't know about it until the other day," he told her. "You should have told me about you and Puck."

He watched her as she swung from side to side, alternating on the balls of her feet. She was barefoot; her toenails painted pink. "It just kind of… came up," she said, hugging Quinn's purse to her chest like it was her own. "Besides, I never really see you, anyway."

Finn started to laugh and looked down at the floor. "Yeah, well… maybe I'll have a class with you next year, or something."

She giggled and looked at him with a smile, bearing her teeth. She had a beautiful smile; practically lighting up the dimly-lit hallway on its own.

"Maybe," she repeated, still not looking away from him. There was a beat of silence between the two of them, Finn watching Rachel as she looked up at him with a smile.

"Do you want to come with me upstairs?" She asked him, causing Finn's heart to stammer. "I need to put Quinn's purse up there, I guess, and… well. You can see my room if you'd like."

He looked at her and smiled. There was something so intriguing about Rachel that Finn had never come across in any other girl before, and he wanted to know why she was the way she was.

"Sure," he said, smiling slightly. "I'd like that, Rachel."

:.:.:

"So this is me at my first dance recital, and this is me and my dads in Chicago, and this is me in the musical this winter," she told him eagerly, pointing to each bedazzled picture frame as she described to him the synopsis of each photo. Finn watched her as she smiled wider each time she picked up a new picture frame and practically shoved it in his face, eagerly explaining the story behind each picture and why there were so important to her.

Finn couldn't help but look around her room while he was upstairs, noticing the pink walls and the pink bed spread and pillows and the pink curtains hanging in front of the window across from her bed. "You must like pink, huh?"

Rachel turned around to face Finn, her smile falling for a moment. He looked at her and watched her as she smiled at him again, making him feel like butterflies were in his stomach. Finn was sure that he had never seen a more beautiful girl than Rachel. He didn't want to turn into the clichéd boyfriend who ended up falling for another girl, because he knew that he wasn't falling for Rachel. She just so happened to be a really pretty girl who was nice to him. That was all it should have been.

"It's my favorite color," she told him with a grin. Finn watched her as she turned back around to her vanity and set the picture frame down that she had been holding up to show him moments earlier. He watched her as she looked in the mirror and adjusted the bodice of her dress around her waist, looking like she wasn't very pleased with herself or her appearance, he couldn't tell.

"I think you look really nice tonight, by the way," he said as if to keep her from preoccupying over what she looked like in the mirror. Finn took the moment to take in the image of Rachel in the dress she was wearing for the night; a flowing, pink number that had heart-shaped buttons starting at the collar and trailing down until they reached the hem of her dress.

She blushed and looked at him with a smile, the biggest and brightest smile she had given him all night. "T-thanks," she stammered nervously. "I picked it out for Puck, actually." She spun around in the dress like she was some princess in a Disney movie who had just finished cleaning her room. "Do you think he'll like it?"

Finn already knew the answer to Rachel's question, but he didn't want to let her down. She looked like she was having such a great time and was happy with herself that he didn't feel the need to tell her about what Puck looked for in a girlfriend – not that Puck ever really had real girlfriends.

"Um, yeah," he told her, playing with his hands in his lap nervously. He didn't have the heart to tell her that Puck would have thought that Rachel's dress looked like it belonged on a six year old, and that he would have preferred her in something that resembled a swimsuit or a nightgown or nothing at all. "How are things going with you two, anyway?"

Rachel looked at Finn as he sat himself down on the edge of her bed, blushing slightly. "Fine, I guess. We haven't really gone on a lot of dates, I guess. He just tells me to go to his house with him after school and we watch TV together or something, but we always end up making out in his room instead."

Finn felt his mouth dry out and his heart drop to the pit of his stomach. He was surprised that Rachel was being so candid with him about her relationship with Puck so far. He would have expected her to turn her nose up in the air and cross her arms over his chest before saying something like 'that's none of your business,' but she decided to tell him anyway.

It was better from Rachel, he figured. Puck was probably going to give him details he wouldn't want to hear later on – if he got that far with her, anyway.

"Oh," was all Finn could say, not wanting to embarrass her. "It's just that I didn't even know you guys were dating until a few days ago, and Puck never tells me anything, so-"

"He never really tells me anything either," she told Finn, giggling slightly. She turned around to face the mirror in her vanity again, looking at her reflection like Finn wasn't able to see the expression on her face or what she was doing, but he watched her anyway, like he was sitting in on her in a moment of privacy.

"Sometimes I wonder if he actually cares about me," she muttered, fingering a lock of her hair in the mirror. "But otherwise he wouldn't be dating me, right?" Rachel spun around and looked at Finn, a smile stuck to her face.

All Finn could really do was smile at her like everything was alright. He figured that if Rachel had gotten into a relationship with Puck that it wouldn't necessarily work out, and so far, it looked like he was right.

"Right," he said, choking on his words slightly. "I just can't see why he wouldn't like you, Rachel."

Rachel broke into a fit of giggles and walked up to Finn, who had stood up in front of her bed.

"Thanks, Finn," she said sweetly, grabbing him and pulling him in for an embrace. "I don't think I've ever met anyone as nice as you before."

Finn wrapped his arms around her small frame and awkwardly held her, not knowing what to do. She tipped her head up and pulled her arms away from him, smiling.

"Let's go downstairs, okay?" She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the door. "I want you to actually spend time with your friends, not just up here with me in my room."

Finn followed her out of her room and down the stairs, finding it hard to keep up with her, even though he was at least a foot taller than her.

It was too bad, too. The more he thought about it, the more Finn wanted to spend the night with Rachel in her room, just talking to her. Spending time with Rachel was all he wanted to do.

:.:.:

It didn't take very long for Rachel's party to get into full swing. Finn quickly learned that while he was upstairs with Rachel that Puck was out buying alcohol after Rachel had informed him that she wasn't about to open up the liquor cabinet in her basement, which he was sure left Puck upset. That was what made a party, in his opinion, anyway. It wasn't really a party until everyone was drunk, Finn had learned.

Unfortunately, not everyone was fun to be around once they got drunk.

"I feel like Little Miss Perfect wasn't expecting to get as drunk as she is," Quinn whispered to Finn while she was working second beer. Quinn wasn't a very heavy drinker to begin with, and Finn thought that she was choosing not to drink as much for some odd reason that he couldn't put his finger on.

Rachel, however, had far too much to drink and was busy trying to make her party a more entertaining one by talking to everyone who had shown up. She was no longer the polite and demure girl that Finn had grown to like, and was instead a loud, boisterous and somewhat promiscuous drunk.

It had almost gotten to the point where Finn didn't want to spend time with her anymore, simply because she didn't act the way she normally did. Rachel spent the night sitting on Puck's lap and laughing over the obscene things he had said about her, and it made Finn feel like he was going to throw up.

Rachel deserved better than Puck as a boyfriend, and it killed Finn to see her that way.

Quinn had gotten up and gone somewhere else, Finn losing track of her before he noticed Rachel walking up to him.

"Finn," she said, her voice sounding different than usual. "I want to sit next to you."

Finn looked at her and then around the room, looking for any trace of Puck. Suddenly, it was like everyone had disappeared besides him and Rachel, and while Finn usually would have enjoyed it, it wasn't fun anymore. Rachel wasn't the same anymore.

"Hey, Rachel, I don't think you should-"

"But you said that you liked spending time with me," she gushed, planting herself on his lap. Finn groaned and put his arms around her so she wouldn't tumble off of his lap in a drunken haze. "And that my dress was pretty, right?" She giggled and rested her chin against his shoulder, tipping her head up so she could look at him.

"Don't you think I would look prettier with my dress off, though, Finn?"

Finn swallowed thickly and pushed Rachel off of his lap, trying his best to do so without throwing her to the floor. "Woah, Rachel, you've got to stop," he said, watching her as she tripped over her own two feet and managed to regain her footing in front of him.

"But, Finn, I thought you liked spending time with me," she said, her words slurring together.

"Not like this," he told her bluntly. She looked at him, Finn trying to look at her in her glazed-over eyes. "Look, Rachel, you can't be someone you're not just because you're drunk."

She looked at him and swallowed nervously, sighing. "So you don't like me anymore?"

"No," Finn said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "At least, not like this, Rachel. You're just… you're dru-"

"What are you doing talking to her?" Quinn asked, approaching Finn again and grabbing him by the shoulder. Rachel looked at Quinn, playing with the hem of her dress nervously. "Finn, seriously? She's drunk."

"I'm not that drunk," Rachel protested, sniffling slightly. Finn could see the tears beginning to spring to her eyes, feeling his stomach twist into a knot.

"Please," Quinn sneered, rolling her eyes. "You're nothing but a drunk slut who can't get laid because no one wants to sleep with her." Finn watched as Rachel looked at him, still looking upset in her drunken mess.

"Come on, Finn," Quinn said, grabbing his hand in her own. "Let's go."

He watched as Rachel looked at him and Quinn as she walked away with him.

And, for the first time, Finn didn't feel bad for her.


	5. Chapter 5: Now

Rachel's decided that she's going to take everything Kurt's told her and throw it out the window. It's not like she doesn't like him anymore, and she'd never call off their almost bi-weekly lunch dates, but she's decided that she's going to build her own impression of Finn for herself, Kurt's opinion not included.

She wakes up and makes her way into the kitchen before she even remembers that Finn's sleeping on her couch. He's got her blankets pushed into a bundle at his feet and is snoring softly, mouth hanging open as she stares at him.

Rachel feels something brush against her legs and jumps nearly three feet in the air in shock.

"Berkley," she says, watching as her cat strolls into the kitchen. Rachel hasn't been this on edge before. She's never known herself to be so jumpy and nervous about everything.

She doesn't want to blame Finn for her new personality or anything, but if she has to lay the blame on anyone, it's Finn.

Rachel decides that as long as Finn's asleep, she won't bother him. She needs to make herself breakfast and get dressed so she can make it to work on time, and staring at Finn on her couch isn't going to help her do that.

Okay, so she's not staring. Maybe she's just looking at him longingly for longer than a normal person would. If she were staring, she would be indicating some kind of sympathy for him, and that's not what she feels for Finn at all.

She can just distract herself with making breakfast and not worry about Finn or how cute he looks sleeping on her couch.

She didn't just think that.

Rachel goes into her kitchen and pulls a bushel of grapes from her refrigerator, setting them down on the counter. Maybe if she spends her time focusing on how much fruit she can cut up in half an hour, she won't worry about the fact that Finn's sleeping on her couch and is in her life again. He doesn't need to be the only thing she worries about, anyway. It's not like she's in high school anymore. When they were in high school, it was like all Rachel could ever focus her energy on was Finn. All she thought about was Finn and how he was going to make her next day a living hell.

Rather, how Finn and Quinn were going to make her next day a living hell, but that wasn't the point now.

The more she thinks about it, the more Rachel realizes that maybe it wasn't all Finn who had made her life a living hell. Maybe her whole high school experience wasn't that bad, and she's just making a bigger deal out of everything than she needs to.

Then again, maybe she's not the crazy one. He's the one who thought that she would be willing to actually let him into her apartment after all these years.

But, of course, she's the one who's let him stay in the first place.

She decides that she needs to stop working herself up into a lather. Stressing out over how Finn's in her apartment and sleeping on her couch and eating her food shouldn't be something that makes her feel stressed out and worried, but it is. Ever since he's gotten to Ohio, he's been the most normal she's ever known him to be. He hasn't made one comment about how her clothes make her look like a mix between a toddler and an old lady or how her laugh sounds like nails on a chalkboard yet.

Rachel's been expecting him to break character and turn into the Finn she remembers from high school any moment now. The same rude, inconsiderate Finn that made her want to reconsider answering the phone when he had called her in the first place.

She doesn't hear anything while she's busy throwing all of the fruit she's cut up into a bowl, wiping her hands of the strawberries and grapes and peaches on a towel on the counter nearby. She's learned to keep an ear open to listen to whatever sounds odd from outside for the amount of time she's spent living alone; learning that simply having a cat doesn't make for a very good security system.

Of course, it's only clichéd that Finn's the one to surprise her.

"Oh, my God," she says, jumping slightly and dropping the knife she's using to cut up her breakfast onto the floor by her feet. Finn looks at her, running a hand through his messy hair.

"Sorry," he says, eyes slowly opening and adjusting to the light in the kitchen. "I didn't think you'd be awake yet."

"I have to get ready for work," she tells him, bending over so she can pick up the knife she's dropped and returning to her bowl full of produce. "I'm more surprised that you're up this early." She takes a moment to look at the clock hanging over her stove to see what time it is. "You've got all day to sleep in, don't you?" She smiles to herself, looking down at her feet. "You weren't planning anything important, were you?"

She watches as he looks at her, trying her best not to look back up at him. She doesn't want to look at him for too long. Rachel doesn't know why, but she knows that her heart's going to start wanting to pound out of her chest if she looks at him for too long.

Even if he's ripped her heart out before and torn it into a million little pieces, she still feels like her stomach's going to twist into a knot the next time he looks at her.

"Actually, um, no, I was wondering if you would be able to take me to the hospital today," he tells her, wiping his hands off on his boxer shorts.

This time, however, Rachel manages to find the courage to look up at him. Her brow furrows and she feels anger boil up inside her stomach. All of the words that Kurt's told her are beginning to sink in and absorb into her conscious. Maybe Finn still isn't all he's cracked up to be. Maybe deep down, he's still the horrible, cowardly person she remembers him to be.

"The hospital?" She tries her best not to appear upset, but she's not one who can easily hide her emotions from other people. "Finn, I… I've got a job I've got to go to. I can't just drop everything in my day to take you to the hospital."

He walks up so that he's closer to her, Rachel trying her best not to notice the smirk stuck to his face. The longer she looks at him, the more she wants to forget any of this ever happened. Maybe she can call Kurt and pay him off to take care of Finn instead.

It's turned into a chore much sooner than she's expected.

"Woah, I didn't mean to make you mad," he tells her, moving in closer to her until she can feel his arm come closer to wrapping around her waist. She doesn't want him to touch her. She doesn't want to speak to him, so she doesn't see why she should want him to touch her. "Look, Rachel, I was just wondering if you could drop me off at the hospital, or something. You know, for my leg?"

She turns her head down in the opposite direction of him and does everything in her power to ignore him for as long as possible.

"It looks like your leg is fine," she tells him, snark hidden in her voice. "You're not on your crutches this morning." Her eyes flick up to look at him and she watches as Finn's face begins to turn red, unsure as to why he's been able to make it into her kitchen without the crutches he had seemed so reliant on the night before. "Are you sure you need to go to the hospital?"

Rachel turns around and starts to pour the chopped fruit from the bowl into a Tupperware container that she would be bringing to work that morning. She tosses her hair over her shoulder and walks away from Finn, feeling him walk up behind her. His hands grab on to her waist, holding her firmly in his grip while he has the chance.

"I guess it's just starting to feel better," he tells her, looking down at her as she tips her head up to look into his eyes.

For a moment, she doesn't budge, and instead chooses to look up at Finn like he's just sold her the world, mouth half open and eyes wide as she looks at him. She's never felt him this close against her, nor has she wanted to, either.

But then, she manages to regain her sanity and swats at his chest, pushing herself away from him quickly.

"Don't touch me," she warns him, pushing off of his chest. "I don't care what your leg feels like or not, you're not allowed to touch me."

He looks at her and she feels his eyes trained on her dutifully, not knowing what to think or feel about it. She walks back over to the counter space she's been working in front of and begins to pack up her breakfast for the morning, staring at Finn once she turns around again.

"I'll take you to the hospital after work today," she tells him, furrowing her brow as she looks at him. "But you'll have to come to the school with me." Rachel adjusts her hair and looks at Finn, unsure as to what to do about the whole situation.

Her gut tells her to throw him out on the street with his suitcase and tell him to find some new place to live while he's here. She should have known that the honeymoon period with Finn would have only lasted a day or so, and it has. The morning after she's picked him up and they're already arguing with one another.

"That doesn't sound like a problem," he tells her, smirking at her slightly. Rachel looks at him and scowls, turning around so she can speak to him.

"Finn, let me make something very clear," she tells him, placing a hand on her hip. "Just because you're staying with me does not mean you get to treat me like you would Quinn, or Santana, or any of the other girls you chose to be intimate with during the time we knew each other." She narrows her eyes and walks up to him, having to tip her head up to see him completely. "I'm providing you with a bed and food every once and a while. I'm not a playmate and I'm not someone you can go to for… casual sex, or whatever you normally expect in a woman." She sneers and crosses her arms over her chest, sighing deeply. "And right now, you're going to get dressed in a respectable outfit and be ready to leave in no less than twenty minutes."

She watches as he looks at her and walks through the hall to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

She's not going to be subjected to whatever kind of game he plans on playing with her.

:.:.:

Rachel makes her way back out into the living room after she's gotten dressed and done her hair and makeup, surprised to find Finn dressed and sitting on the edge of her couch once she walks out.

She chooses not to say anything, although she feels that a smile suffices. She grabs her purse and keys from the fishbowl and Finn follows after her, limping slightly on his bad leg. Rachel eyes up his leg as he walks out to her car, unsure as to what's going on with his injury. She feels like she shouldn't really care; if he's able to walk around her apartment without the crutches he's seemed so reliant on, then she shouldn't really worry about anything. Maybe he needs to go to the hospital to change his bandages or something.

Maybe the doctor's going to tell him that he should find his own apartment somewhere in Lima and to stop mooching off of girls he neglected and embarrassed in high school.

They don't really speak to one another on the drive to the elementary school. It's not a very long drive, but Rachel doesn't really want start a conversation with him, either. After her mild episode with him in her kitchen, she's not sure what kind of topic they should start talking about.

It's not like she can just start talking about what she does at her job or whatever movie he watched last night after telling him that he'll never, ever be able to have her.

After all, it's not like he had ever implied that.

Rachel pulls her car into her parking space and kills the engine, turning in her seat to look at Finn. The school buses haven't started pulling in yet, and she's surprised that she's managed to make it there in time.

"So, do you just walk in, or…"

"Pretty much," she says, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening the door as she grabs her purse from where it sits at her feet. Rachel knows that she shouldn't be this standoffish and curt with Finn. It's not like he's been a complete asshole the entire time she's been having him stay with her.

Granted, he's only been staying with her for about twenty-four hours, but still.

Rachel begins to make her way up to the front doors and listens to Finn get out of the car and shut the door behind her, not bothering to turn around to look at him. It's not like he doesn't know the whole layout of the building. They did go here together back when they were in elementary school, after all.

She swings the front door to the school open and holds it open for Finn, watching him as he limps inside on his bad leg. She furrows her brow and chooses not to say anything about it. It's his leg, so it's his own problem. For all she knows, his lack of crutches is why he's going to the hospital today.

Of course, she does find it funny that the amount of pain he looks like he's in changes from day to day, but that's probably rude to bring up as well.

It reminds her of him in high school. Flaky and flighty and seeming to change his opinion on her every few weeks.

"Good morning," she says to the receptionist with a smile, slinging her purse over her shoulder. The older woman sitting behind the glass smiles back at Rachel, pushing her glasses up further on her nose.

"Mary, this is Finn," Rachel says, gesturing back towards Finn with a smile. "He's an old friend of mine from high school. He's planning on being a music teacher himself."

The older woman smiles and presses a hand to her chest. "Well, bless your heart," she says, beaming.

Finn looks through the glass at the woman and smiles, waving awkwardly.

"Yes, and I told him that he could come in for the day and complete some of his student teaching hours with me, if that's alright?" Rachel drums her fingernails against the desktop in front of the window. She starts to chew her lip nervously and smiles at the woman sweetly. "I know that I probably should have run it through administration first, but I figured-"

"Oh, go ahead sweetheart," the receptionist tells her, smiling and waving the two of them on. "Just let me write you a guest nametag and you should be fine. I'll alert everyone in the building just in case they have any questions."

Rachel turns over her shoulder to Finn with a smug smirk on her face like she's just won the lottery. She waits for a moment and the secretary slides the nametag out from underneath her desk.

"Just fill it out in your room, sweetheart." She pauses for a moment and takes a look at Finn, Rachel noticing what she's doing.

"Have a nice day, you two."

Rachel starts to make her way down the hallway, Finn trailing after her. She doesn't bother to wait up for Finn, whether his leg is bothering him or not.

"Rachel, what the hell was that?"

She rolls her eyes and turns around in the hall, her voice lowered down to a hushed whisper.

"I can't just bring you in here as a guest, Finn," she says, like it's some big, obvious thing he's supposed to know. "So you're just going to pretend you're a student teacher here today." She waves his nametag in the air by her face, smiling slightly. "Besides, it'll be fun. My job's not that difficult, anyway."

She turns around again and continues down the hallway until she stops in front of her door, pulling her lanyard of keys out from her purse and twisting the handle. She flicks the lights on and walks to her desk, watching as Finn spends more time looking around and taking his time than actually walking inside of the room.

"This place hasn't really changed," he tells her, head tipped up and looking at the posters she has decorating the walls. Most of them aren't really hers, anyway. She looks at him after setting her purse on her desk and wipes her hands off on her skirt, walking over to him. Her room is one of the biggest ones in the building, even though Rachel isn't sure why. There's just enough room for her to make a circle with her students and walk around them when she chooses to play Duck Duck Goose with them after a night she hasn't bothered to put together an actual lesson plan.

(Duck Duck Goose should be able to count as a musical activity.)

"Yeah," she says off-handedly, walking over to a cabinet and pulling out a stack of whiteboards and a basket of dry-erase markers. "It's kind of funny, actually. The longer you stay here, though, the older you feel." She giggles under her breath and sets the materials down on the floor on top of the colorful rug she has spread out in the center of the room.

Finn looks at her and she feels his eyes trained on her as she walks around the room, preparing her classroom for the day ahead of her. Normally she would feel like it was just another day, but it's not. Finn's watching her like a hawk and observing everything she's doing.

"What are you doing?" She asks, staring back at him.

"Well, I'm supposed to be your little apprentice today, aren't I?" He asks her, cocking his head to the side. He finds a small chair to sit in and slowly eases himself into it, Rachel finding it hard not to laugh once she notices six-foot tall Finn hunched over in a small chair built for a boy less than half his age. "By the way, you're forgetting my nametag, Miss Berry."

Rachel rolls her eyes as she watches him pick up one of the maracas off of the shelving unit behind his chair. He shakes it a bit and smiles to himself, Rachel walking back to her desk and scribbling his name down on the nametag she had been given moments earlier.

"There," she says, peeling the sticker from its back and slapping it on his chest. "If I'm Miss Berry, you're Mr. Hudson."

She watches him as he starts to laugh and rolls his eyes. "You like this, don't you?" She turns around to face him, unsure as to what he's talking about. "Your job, I mean. I mean, I don't remember that much about you in school, but you really liked music, didn't you?"

"Y-yes," she says, unsure as to why her voice feels the need to fall into a stammer. "I always knew growing up that I wanted to do _something _with my musical gifts and talents." She starts to pull the blinds open to her room and the sunlight begins to stream in, providing more light than the flickering fluorescents that hover above them.

There's a beat of silence between the two of them, Rachel continuing to walk around her room and organize things into oblivion for the day. She's normally much more methodical about this. It's just the fact that Finn's there, watching her this time.

"Hey," he tells her, his voice softer than she's used to hearing it. "I'm sorry for this morning, just so y'know. I was tired and kind of cranky and I'm not really myself in the morning, but what I did was totally uncalled for. Like, I'm your guest, Rachel. The fact that you're doing all of this for me is just… like, mind-blowing."

She tips her head down from where she's standing and bites down on a smile, beginning to play with her hands in front of her.

"You're forgiven," she says, not bothering to turn around to face him. Her heels clack against the carpeted floor and she makes her way to her desk again, walking behind it and sitting in her chair so that she can log onto her computer. She sits in her chair and swivels around so that her back is facing Finn, her ponytail falling over her shoulder as she adjusts herself.

"So, um, when do all of the kids show up?" He asks her, clasping his hands together. She spins around and looks at him, eyes wide. "I mean, I'm kind of excited for that, I'm not going to lie. Do you think they'll let me go out to recess with them and stuff?"

Rachel lets out a giggle and hits a few keys on her keyboard before looking at him again. "I'm sure if you really wanted to, they would agree to let you assist in supervising." She stands up from her chair again and walks up to the door, opening it up slowly. "Besides, I don't just teach one group of children; I teach every class that comes in. Don't you remember music class when we were younger?"

"Yeah," he says, nodding his head slowly. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I do. You were in my music class, Rachel."

She nods and smiles at him, holding onto the door. "Well, the kids come in for little forty-five minute increments twice a week, and I teach them then. I don't think I could ever handle being an actual teacher."

"Well duh, because then you couldn't sing to them."

Rachel smiles and feels her face begin to redden. "No," she says, trying her best to let her emotions be seen. "Sure," she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "I mean, that's why I became a music teacher, but, you know. It takes a special kind of a person to be a teacher. It's why they have appreciation days for them."

:.:.:

About halfway into her day, one of Rachel's fifth grade classes comes in. The fifth graders are her least favorite; they're the oldest ones in the building and the most defiant, at that.

They are, however, the only ones she feels are old enough to cover her favorite subject with.

"Alright, class," she says once all of the students have entered the room and sat down in the circle they always do, Rachel nudging herself into the circle between two girls on her knees. "Today, we have a very special visitor with us," she says, gesturing towards Finn and offering him a smile. "This is Mr. Hudson," she says, her voice oozing of sugary sweetness. "He's getting ready to be a music teacher, just like me."

She offers him a wink and he laughs, waving at the classroom of children. Rachel feels her chest tighten and looks back at her class, a smile painted on her face.

"He's going to be watching what we do in class for the day so he knows how to be a good teacher," she says, the students looking at her like she holds the world in her hands. "Besides, I think that today is one of the best days for him to be here, because we get to talk about one of my favorite parts about music."

The kids watch her as she smiles and adjusts her hands in her lap. "Does anyone here know what a musical is?"

A girl raises her hand off to the side of the circle.

"Yes, Abby?"

"It's like, a movie where everybody sings in it?"

Rachel laughs softly to herself and nods her head towards the girl missing her two front teeth. "That's very good," she says, a smile still stuck to her face. "Does anyone else want to guess what a musical is?"

A few more kids raise their hands and Rachel calls on them, seeming to enjoy this time with her students more than any other time she's spent with them all day. She watches Finn out of the corner of her eye from time to time, wondering if he's watching her like she's crazy.

He's not – or at least he doesn't look like he is.

She spends a few more minutes talking to the students about musicals and finally stands up, a grin stuck to her face. She makes some announcement about them watching a movie musical in class and turns around to turn on the television set behind her, the students all beginning to laugh and smile and cheer because they get to watch a movie for the day.

By the time the titles for _West Side Story _flash onto the old television set, Rachel's walked back over to her desk to put something away, noticing that Finn's moved over in his chair so he's able to get a better view of the television set. She smiles and begins to make her way back over to the group of students now huddled around the television set, but Finn stops her.

"You really like musicals, don't you?" His voice is caught in a whisper, but he still smiles at her like it's his favorite thing to talk about.

"I suppose," she says, trying to play everything off like it's nothing.

Finn turns back to the television set for a moment, only to turn back to Rachel one more time.

"Yeah, you were in like, all of the musicals in high school, weren't you?"

"Yeah," she says, smiling fondly at the words that escape her. There's a beat and Finn's still looking up at her, drumming his fingers against the chair he's sitting in.

"Yeah, I remember you being really good and stuff, Rachel. That was, like, what you were going to do with your life, wasn't it? At least that's what everyone thought would happen to you." He smiles at her slightly, but Rachel doesn't say anything back. Her smile falls and she grabs onto the hem of her skirt, worrying it in her hand nervously.

"Yeah," she says, her voice falling into something just short of a whisper. "But, um, I love my job now, and I wouldn't trade it for the world."

She sighs and rests a hand on Finn's shoulder unknowingly.

"This is my last class of the day. We can leave for the hospital early if you'd like." Rachel walks past him back to her class and stands behind them, eyes engrossed in the movie flickering on the television screen in front of her.

She never expected Finn's arrival to turn into some soul-searching adventure for her. She's done enough of that already.

She can take him to the hospital and forget all about what he tells her, whether what he says is on purpose or not. Maybe taking care of Finn is good for her. She gets to feel like she's helping someone without actually doing all of the dirty work. Maybe providing him with food and shelter and a shoulder to lean on is all he really needs.

She doesn't need Finn to dissect her life choices and remind her just like everyone else always has that she's made the wrong decisions in life. That's what everyone else is for.

Maybe, just maybe, Finn's supposed to be in her life for a good reason. Whatever that reason is, she doesn't know yet – but she'll be damned if she doesn't find out.


	6. Chapter 6: Then

The summer after their sophomore year went by quickly. Finn ended up getting a job at the pizza place down the street from his school and had managed to save up enough money to meet his mother for a car by mid-July. The three months that the school gave them as a vacation sped by and Finn was slightly surprised when September rolled around again.

When he wasn't working during the summer, Finn spent most of his free time with Quinn. He was surprised by all of the new freedom he acquired upon getting a car to drive, and spent most nights driving over to Quinn's to pick her up and then continue to take her to a movie or something else that would mean they would be able to get out of the house.

After his incident with Rachel, Finn didn't spend much time talking to her or thinking about her. Rachel turned into one of those people that you quickly forgot about after the school year was over, and then remembered vaguely when September returned and noticed that their hair had gotten longer or they had gotten their braces taken off.

For some reason, he knew that Rachel wouldn't be the same. He had Quinn, and that was all that mattered. Besides, he didn't want Rachel after his last impression of her. Finn had no interest in having to handle Rachel if she acted like that all of the time.

Maybe he would just have to see her in the halls and pray that he didn't have any classes with her when school started back up again. Finn figured that the less time he spent with and around Rachel, the better not only for him, but for her as well.

:.:.:

Every year right before school started there was always a convention of sorts held in the cafeteria of the school. Each after-school activity and sports team had their own tri-fold board and presentation presented by the upperclassmen to the incoming freshmen who had interest in the activities for the following years.

When Finn had been asked if he wanted to talk to the incoming freshmen about the football team with Puck, he had agreed to it. He was going to captain the team his junior year, and he was excited for the season to finally start.

Of course, he would have said no if he had known that Rachel would have been manning the drama club's own presentation next to him.

Rachel and Puck had broken up sometime around the fourth of July. Finn never asked Puck why, but he knew that it was because she wasn't willing to sleep with him. Finn never really said anything, but it didn't really matter to him anymore. He had lost interest in Rachel and what she was to him. She was no longer the girl that he thought was funny and beautiful and cute and wanted to see walk down the hallway when he was making his way from class to class. Now he worried about whether or not Rachel would have a class with him or not, or whether or not she would want to talk to him about something inane like she always wanted to.

Finn never thought that the day would come, but there came a point when he didn't care that much about Rachel anymore.

She looked nice when she walked up to her own tri-fold board; one that Finn could tell Rachel had decorated herself. Gold stars brimmed from the corners and pictures of her in productions from years past seemed to be the highlight of the content on the board.

He caught a glimpse of her in the corner of his eye as she started talking to a freshman with braces who had come up to her booth and almost had to do a double take.

Rachel had gotten a lot prettier over the summer. Her figure filled out (in the good way) and her hair lightened in the sun, and Finn swore that she had gotten taller since the last time he had seen her. The more he milled it over in his head, the more sense it made that Puck would have gotten upset with her for not wanting to sleep with him.

"Dude, I've got to take a leak," Puck told Finn about halfway through the night. Finn really hadn't been paying much attention to what was going on at the actual activity fair and instead spent his time watching Rachel out of the corner of his eye; listening in on her conversations with prospective students who wanted to join the drama club. "I'll be back soon."

Finn shoved his hands in his pockets and watched for more students to come to talk to him, but there weren't as many as he would have expected. With a losing football team, it probably wasn't very likely that tons of students would want to play for the school team.

Rachel's booth, however, seemed to be buzzing with students.

"You, um… you look pretty busy."

Rachel tipped her head up from the table she was bent over in front of and looked at Finn, making his throat start to go dry. She wiped her hands off on the skirt of her dress and turned to him, smiling slightly.

"Yeah," she said, not seeming nervous in the slightest. "I guess last year's production of _Bye Bye Birdie _really made people get to talking about our theatre department… no matter how abysmal it may be." She turned her head back to look at a picture of her from the winter musical on the board she had assembled, Finn looking at it with her.

"Yeah, um, I was gonna see that one, I just…"

"You just ran out of time, I get it."

He sighed, feeling her words stepping over his own and crushing him with it. Rachel had never been so quick before. It reminded Finn of Santana and how snarky she could be if she wanted to.

There was a long pause between them, and Rachel looked like she wanted to start calling people over to her booth just so she could avoid speaking to Finn for a moment longer.

He decided to break the silence, however, just to see what her reaction would be. It couldn't have been that bad, after all. It was only Rachel he was dealing with.

"So, um, how was your summer?"

"Fine," she responded curtly, crossing her arms over her chest. "I got a job at the frozen yogurt place at the mall." Finn nodded along with what she said, wondering why he had never seen her working there. He had gone to the mall with Quinn a few times over break, but not many. He was sure that Quinn and Santana and Brittany all went to the mall together and tormented Rachel on their own while they were there.

"And I was in the community theatre production of _Grease_," she said, smiling slightly. "I was Sandy."

Finn pulled his eyes up away from Rachel's chest and tried to find her eyes instead, watching her face screw into a frown upon realizing where he had been staring at her the entire time. "Oh, um, yeah," he stammered, trying to shift his attention back to the conversation he had been having with her. "I've seen that movie a couple of times. She's the one that wears like, the cat suit at the end, right?"

He watched her as she rolled her eyes at his comment, clearly not wanting to talk. Finn never would have guessed that there would be a point in time where Rachel didn't want to talk incessantly, but apparently, there was.

Finn shifted around in front of his presentation board and turned to face Rachel sympathetically.

"Hey, I'm sorry about whatever happened between you and Puck," he said, shrugging slightly. For the first time all night, Rachel started to smile at him.

"Oh, thanks," she muttered, beginning to play with her hair. "But, um, I've moved on. Over the summer I found that it was important for me to find a boyfriend who matched me… artistically." He looked at her, confused.

"What?"

"While I was in _Grease, _I met someone."

"Oh, that's pretty cool," Finn said, trying to sound casual. "Does he go here?"

"No," she said, smiling brightly. "He's, um, a freshman at Boston Conservatory this year."

Finn felt his stomach feel like it was going to fall out through his feet. Of course, Rachel had moved on to dating college guys. She was much more mature than guys her age and was wise beyond her ears. It only made sense that she dated guys who were older than her.

"We're basically inseparable," she gloated, fanning out the brochures that had been left over from the bulk of the students coming in for the activity fair. "He understands me and I understand him and we're just the best things that have ever happened for each other." Finn looked at her and could tell that she was trying to impress him by talking about her brand new college boyfriend, but he thought that she could do enough just by bringing up the fact that she was dating someone in college. College guys were different than the guys in high school. College guys brought their dates out to bars and bought them drinks and then brought them back to their apartments so they could have sex with them. Finn couldn't so much as bring Quinn home because of having to worry about his mother catching them.

"That sounds great," he said, trying his best not to seem like he didn't care. "I'm sure you're really happy together."

"Oh, we are," Rachel said, turning back to Finn again. "Actually, he's taking me to this karaoke bar on Friday night. He's driving back home for the weekend."

Finn smiled and looked at her, laughing slightly. "Well, hopefully you don't get super drunk again, huh?"

Rachel narrowed her eyes and folded her arms across her chest.

"It looks like Puck's back from the bathroom," she said, tipping her head slightly. "Nice talking to you, Finn."

:.:.:

"A karaoke bar?"

"Yeah," Finn said, locking the door to his car with the little remote on his keychain. He walked up to Quinn and grabbed her hand with his free one, looking down at her with a slight smile. "C'mon, Quinn. It'll be fun."

The blonde rolled her eyes and Finn nudged her in the side. "It'll be just like watching all of the stupid drama kids singing their show tunes like they do every day after school in the auditorium. No thank you."

He felt a tug in his gut after Quinn finished speaking, wondering if he had made the right decision. Maybe Rachel had been lying to him the entire time and his punishment would be sitting alone at the karaoke bar with Quinn and listening to her complain about how horrible the singers were.

That, and Rachel was probably going to kill him once she saw him there.

He didn't know why he cared so much about her anymore. Just the other day he thought that he had told himself about how he didn't want to worry so much about Rachel Berry and her life, but after she had told him about her planned date with her new boyfriend, Finn knew where she would be and planned to be there himself as well.

Bringing Quinn seemed to work as both his cover-up as well as his downfall.

"No, it won't," he said, rubbing her shoulder. "Just… be nice, okay? I mean, what if we see someone from school?"

Quinn sneered and started laughing to herself. "Then I'll just laugh at them."

He sighed, squeezing her hand tightly. "Quinn. Come on. That's just mean."

Quinn sighed and rested her head against Finn's shoulder. "Fine," she said, spitting the word out like it was poison. "I've never been around this part of town before, though."

Finn looked at the bar ahead of them, squeezing Quinn's hand nervously. Maybe if he kept her away from Rachel, things wouldn't be that bad.

The two of them walked in and Finn pulled Quinn along behind him, hoping he would be able to find a table or a booth close to whichever one Rachel was sitting at. The bar was dimly lit and loud music pumped from the speakers that lined the walls. Finn could have sworn that he could hear Quinn saying something to him from behind, but he couldn't tell what it was. He was too busy trying to find Rachel's face in the sea of people at the bar already.

"Oh my God, Finn, what the hell?" Quinn piped from behind him, concern in her voice. He felt her pull him back and the two stopped in the middle of the bar, Quinn holding onto his wrists. "God, just find a table and sit down. It's like you're looking for someone or something."

They ended up finding a a booth towards the back of the bar, far enough behind all of the tables of people that they were just able to see the small platform of a stage pushed up towards the back wall of the bar. There was some drunk woman in her twenties singing a Madonna song at the moment; most of the crowd laughing at her expense or her small table of friends cheering her on as she continued, spending more time giggling into the microphone than actually reading the words on the screen and signing.

"I'm going to get something to drink," Quinn said, standing up and brushing her dress off. "Do you want anything?"

"Water's fine," Finn said, not really paying attention to her. Quinn crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at him with a scowl on her face.

"Finn, what are you doing?" She asked, furrowing her brow. "Ever since we got here it's like you've been looking for someone."

He could have told her the truth in that moment and felt a lot better about himself, because he would have at least been telling the truth. Finn didn't know why Rachel made him feel the way he did about her. One day he would tell himself that he didn't care about her or how she looked or spoke or laughed, and the next he would see her in the hallway and make a mental note to dedicating his life to knowing everything about her- which, in retrospect, made him sound like some kind of stalker. He wasn't supposed to like Rachel. He had a girlfriend and didn't have to worry about losing her.

Besides, Rachel had her college boyfriend, whoever he was. She was probably more than happy about being with him.

"I'm not," he told Quinn, lying through his teeth. "I'm just looking around at all of the stuff on the walls and stuff. I've never been here before."

Quinn's eyes widened and she scoffed, shifting her weight. "Well, I'm getting something to drink," she said, her voice making her sound like she was worried about him. "I'll be back."

Finn watched as Quinn walked away from their booth and towards the bar, silently wishing she would take longer than she needed to. He knew that Rachel was in the bar somewhere.

Either that or she had already made a stop with her boyfriend (or whatever she was calling him) and they were already gone, doing whatever it was that she wanted to.

There was a smattering of applause for the drunken girl that had just wrapped up her rendition of Madonna's Holiday, and she greeted her audience with a curtsy before practically falling off of the stage. The employee at the bar who must have run the karaoke aspect of it began to usher her off of the stage and Finn suppressed a laugh as he continued to walk her to the edge of the stage and back out into the area where the tables were.

Maybe Rachel had already left. Or maybe she had never shown up to begin with.

The lights dimmed slightly and the announcer for the bar began to speak, although Finn had started to tune it out upon noticing Quinn walking back towards him, two cups in her hands.

"You wanted a water, right?" She asked him, sipping on her lemonade as she sat down. Finn nodded and took the glass from her, setting it down in front of him. He smiled at her and she rolled her eyes, looking at him knowingly.

"You better not make me sing while we're here," she quipped, sounding like she was ready to wag a finger at him. "I don't sing."

Finn laughed, looking at Quinn with a smile.

"Why not? It's not like you can't sing or anything." He wasn't lying, anyway. Finn had heard Quinn sing along to the radio from time to time any every once and a while she would hum something when she was bored. She wasn't a pop star by any means, but Quinn's voice was still pretty.

She sighed and laughed slightly. "Because I don't need to be the center of attention all of the time." She looked at him, taking another sip of lemonade. "Like…" she paused, swallowing thickly and setting her glass down.

Finn looked at her, surprised. "What?"

Quinn started to laugh and pointed up towards the small stage at the head of the bar. "Like her."

Finn looked up towards where Quinn was pointing towards, almost choking on his water. There was Rachel, grabbing onto the microphone stand and lowering it down to her height as she stood in front of everyone. She had a sheepish smile stuck to her face and looked like she was dressed up for the night.

It would only make sense that she was – she was on a date, after all. Her hair had been curled and she wore a navy blue dress that hugged her tighter than the other dresses she normally wore to school. She was on a date with someone from college, after all. She was probably doing everything in her power not to look like she was sixteen.

"That's that one girl that got drunk at Puck's party, isn't it?" Quinn asked, taking another sip of her drink. "She looks… well, not drunk, that's for sure." The blonde laughed to herself and Finn looked at her scornfully. "She goes to school with us, right? I forget her name. It's like…"

"Rachel," Finn corrected her.

"Whatever," Quinn said, rolling her eyes. "She's obnoxious. Last year, she had some giant fit during a lunch period about how more people should consider becoming vegetarians or whatever because it hurts the feelings of animals or whatever." Quinn scoffed and rolled her eyes. "She's weird."

He sighed, looking back up towards Rachel, who was still situating herself at the microphone. "She has a really pretty voice," he said nervously.

There was a tap against the microphone that filled the bar, the chatter subsiding slightly. "Hi," Rachel said, smiling as she stood up on her toes slightly. It didn't seem like she could lower the microphone enough to completely make up for her lack of height. "Um, my name is Rachel Berry, and I'm going to be singing a song from one of my favorite musicals tonight," she continued, beaming.

"Great," Quinn said, rolling her eyes. The songs up until Rachel's performances had all been drunken renditions of REO Speedwagon songs or a cover of a Blondie song. Rachel's was the first show tune.

She nodded at the person operating the board and her song started up, the speakers playing through the bar. Finn didn't recognize the song, but he paid attention nonetheless. Rachel had a beautiful voice, no matter what anyone said.

"She sounds really good," he said to Quinn as Rachel continued to sing. Quinn looked at Finn and rolled her eyes, crossing her legs over one another.

"Whatever," she sneered. "I still think she's weird."

Her song continued, the audience members in the bar becoming quieter and quieter as Rachel's voice got louder and louder. It was like they all became mesmerized by the way she sang the expression in her voice, Finn included. As Quinn pulled her phone out of her purse and went through her texts, Finn continued to watch Rachel as she sang, wondering if she knew he was there. She was probably used to having hundreds of people watch her sing and think she was really good.

Finn didn't even know what she was singing, but it sounded good. Like she was some kind of Broadway star, or whatever. It made him wonder if that was what she wanted to do with her life. Finn knew that she liked performing, but he didn't know if that was actually what she wanted to do when she graduated from high school.

She belted out the final note of her song, met with a deafening amount of applause from the audience who had suddenly started to pay attention to what was happening on the stage. Finn started clapping, smiling up at her as she smiled from ear to ear.

"That was really good," Finn said to Quinn, who still didn't seem to care. The blonde looked up from her phone and stared up at the stage, noticing Rachel smiling and taking a curtsy before walking off of the stage.

"Yeah," she said, not much emotion in her voice. "Really great."

:.:.:

Finn spent the rest of the night thinking that he wouldn't have the opportunity to run into Rachel while he was there. The more he thought about it, the better it was. Finn knew that if he ran into Rachel, she wouldn't have been happy to see him and he would probably have to see her with her boyfriend, whoever he was.

That, and Quinn wouldn't have been very happy to see him talking to Rachel in the first place.

He didn't mind, the more he thought about it. Rachel didn't like him to begin with. She probably thought he was a giant asshole for not treating her like an actual person when Quinn started saying rude things about her right in front of him. In her eyes, he was probably supposed to be her friend – or at least be nice to her. They had never been friends before, but they had never been enemies before, either. It didn't make sense for him not to like her out of the blue.

There came a point in the evening where less people wanted to go up and sing their own renditions of their favorite songs (mainly because all of the drunk people had gone home), and Quinn excused herself to use the bathroom, leaving Finn by himself.

There wasn't much trouble he could get into sitting at a table by himself, the more he thought of it. Finn grabbed one of the salt shakers at the table and started pushing it around the table monotonously, tired. It was late, and Quinn was clearly bored.

He felt like setting his head down at the table and falling asleep – and he would have, if it weren't for the voice that he heard behind him.

"Hi Finn."

He sat up from the table and turned around, recognizing the feminine voice immediately. It wasn't heavy and bored like Quinn's. It wouldn't have been Quinn, anyway.

Rachel stood behind him, hand clasped with the hand of some guy standing next to her. Finn only assumed that it was her new boyfriend.

"Oh," he said, clearing his throat and standing up quickly. "Um, hey, Rachel."

She blushed and pushed her hair out of her eyes with her free hand. "I never would have expected you to be here." She laughed slightly, leaning into the guy she was standing next to. "Somehow, karaoke bars don't seem like a place you would frequent."

He stifled a laugh, trying to turn it into something that sounded like a cough. "Yeah, um… I'm here with Quinn, actually." He watched Rachel's face fall the moment he mentioned her. "She's in the bathroom."

"Oh," was all Rachel could say, swinging her occupied hand. There was a beat of silence and she turned to her boyfriend, who had cleared his throat. "Oh, um, Finn, this is Jesse," she said, smiling. "He's my… my boyfriend."

"Oh," Finn said, feeling somewhat defeated. "Nice to meet you."

Jesse smiled and looked down at Rachel, not paying much attention to Finn or the fact that he was right there. "Do you guys go to school together or something, Rach?"

Rachel looked up at him and Finn felt like he was looking in on something he shouldn't have been.

"Yeah," she said, tipping her head up to look at him. "He's, um… on the football team."

"Oh," he said, smiling slightly. "Well, that's nice, isn't it?" Rachel looked back at Finn, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

"I saw you singing earlier," Finn said, looking at Rachel. "You're amazing, Rachel."

She blushed, looking down at her feet for a moment before looking back up at Finn.

"Um, thanks, Finn. That… that means a lot."

"We were actually just leaving," Jesse told Finn, his arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her closer. She shifted awkwardly in his arms and tried her best to bear a smile.

"I'll see you at school, Finn."

She smiled sheepishly as they turned around and walked away; leaving as if they were one cohesive unit that never separated.

Quinn walked back over to the table, wiping her hands off on her dress as she looked at Finn. "Well, I'm ready to go," she began, pausing to look at him. "Just let me get my purse and we can-" She stopped, watching him as his eyes followed Rachel as she walked out the front door.

"Finn."

He turned his head back and noticed her standing behind him, somewhat in shock. "What?"

"Were you just talking to Rachel Berry?"

He walked back over to the table and sat down, trying to act nonchalant.

"No – well, yeah, but I just wanted to tell her that she did a good job singing tonight." He decided not to tell her anything about her new boyfriend with the smile that belonged in toothpaste commercials and spoke to him like he was some kind of condescending asshole.

"Whatever," Quinn said, rolling her eyes and grabbing her purse. "She's just… such a loser."


	7. Chapter 7: Now

Time passes faster than she thought it would have. Before she realizes it, hours turn into days and days turn into weeks. The concept of Finn living with her has turned out to be not that bad after all.

His living arrangement is much simpler, now. Rachel's pulled out the futon in her living room and they've turned the miniscule apartment into something that's somehow able to be occupied by two people who still want nothing to do with each other. The living room is Finn's quarter of the apartment, and the bathroom and her bedroom are hers. The kitchen is the one space they share.

She doesn't mind, if she's allowed to be completely honest with herself. There's something wonderful about waking up to breakfast some mornings (rather, an _attempt _at breakfast, seeing as Rachel doesn't consider cold Fruit Loops to be the breakfast of champions), and when she does the laundry after Finn changes the sheets on the futon and can smell his cologne in the pillow case (she doesn't erupt like Mount Vesuvius anymore when he 'accidentally' forgets parts of his sheets on the living room floor).

He goes to work with her more frequently. She's still able to write off the excuse that he's there as a teacher's assistant, hoping to become a music teacher himself. He seems like the type, anyway. Tall, wears glasses some days, listens to Journey on his iPod. Most of the teacher's assistants that she's met all look the way Finn does.

His crutches have turned into a thing of the past. She asks him if he wants them some mornings and he just tells her no, and it makes sense, anyway. His limp isn't even that bad anymore.

What he's made up for with his lack of a limp, however, he's lost in energy.

Rachel's never known Finn very personally, but she knows that he's not always like this. When he had first moved in with her, he smiled all the time and was always willing to grab the door for her when she came back with bags full of groceries or help her lift a large box when she looked like she was having trouble with one. He seems almost distant now, even though she knows that he doesn't want to be.

And although the Rachel Berry who was with him when he first moved in would have wanted him this way, the Rachel Berry now doesn't. She wants him to be happy for a change.

His visits to the hospital have become more frequent, and she lets him take her car out when he absolutely needs to be at the hospital. She asks him why he needs to be there so often for something as simple as a gunshot wound in his leg, but he tells her that there are all kinds of therapy that needs to happen after being shot or something like that.

Judging by the bills he brings home from the hospital that she snoops at when he leaves them on the coffee table (and she knows that she shouldn't), therapy's costing him a lot of money.

It's part of the reason why she hasn't asked him to chip in on the rent yet.

That, and she doesn't want their living arrangement to feel like something it isn't.

:.:.:

She wakes up one Saturday morning, Berkley sitting at her feet. He doesn't do that very often anymore. Most of the time Rachel wakes up to find Berkley asleep on Finn's chest – which she truly finds funny, no matter how many times she tells Finn that it's not. It's kind of refreshing to find her cat asleep with her instead of her house guest.

She and Finn have developed a dynamic that works – most of the time, anyway. She wakes up early on weekdays and gets ready for work, usually out the door before Finn even wakes up, and by the time she comes home he's sitting on the couch, hallway through a can of cheesy Pringles (with orange fingertips to prove it) and engrossed in the middle of a Family Guy marathon.

It works for the both of them. He stays out of her hair and she stays out of his.

Weekends, however, are slightly different. A weekend is two whole days of the two of them together. She's actually required to make conversation with him and everything.

_Oh, if only your high school self was his host, _she thinks sometimes. _You wouldn't be able to stop talking to him._

It really isn't that bad, anyway. Living with Finn and maintaining a level of civility around him. The longer they spend together, the easier they get along with one another. They established rules that they promised to follow that Rachel's written on the whiteboard stuck to her refrigerator.

They're making it work to the best of their ability.

Rachel looks at her alarm clock before getting out of bed, mumbling something to herself about the time as she pulls the sheets off of her body. Berkley springs off of the mattress and scampers into the hallway, Rachel assuming that he's gone to lie on Finn's chest again. It _is _where she's been finding him most mornings, anyway.

She walks across the hall, sticking her head out of the doorframe, looking for Finn on the couch.

Sure enough, he's there, half-snoring with his mouth hanging open.

He almost looks cute when he's asleep. She refuses to admit it to herself, because that would just contradict everything she's tried to keep hidden away from herself for the past ten years. Regurgitating all of those feelings she's tried to suppress for so long seems like a waste of time to her.

Rachel tries to ignore it and walks into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar behind her as she steps inside. She's not expecting Finn to be awake for another three hours. She has more than enough time to take a shower and get ready for her day of grocery shopping and not much else.

Finn can spend his afternoon watching Family Guy and Berkley for all she cares.

Rachel catches her reflection in the mirror of her medicine cabinet, sighing slightly. She looks tired; like she's back in college and had just pulled an all-nighter studying for some giant exam. She doesn't normally look like this. She's lost her luster, she thinks.

The sad thing is, she's twenty five. She should still look as bright and chipper as she once did in high school – only hotter, because, you know; you're supposed to get hotter after high school.

It's Finn, and she knows it is. It's not like he's aging her or anything, but he's a brand new stressor that's decided to waltz into her life once again. All of a sudden she's been worrying about a new handful of things that she doesn't want to think of at all, from making sure Berkley doesn't "accidentally" forget to use the litter box to keeping up with stocking the refrigerator every week.

She lies to herself and doesn't think of how she's been trying to dress nicer in front of him now that he's been staying with her. She wears makeup on the weekends and actually feels guilty when she doesn't work out once a week now.

She refuses to believe that it's because of Finn, however. Her feelings for him are on a ship that's sailed long ago. She shouldn't be feeling this way.

Rachel peers into the mirror and brings her hands up to her forehead, pulling her hair back and frowning.

"Finn Hudson's going to make you go gray before you turn thirty," she says to herself, dropping her hands down to her sides. She turns around to face the tub and turns the water on, stepping out of her pajamas as she waits for the water to warm up. She pulls her hair out from the large, messy bun it had been piled into the night before and lets her hair fall down over her shoulders, hands moving up to fluff it out as she looks in the mirror once more.

Unfortunately, she doesn't notice the door swinging open quickly, nearly hitting her in the side.

It's Finn. Standing in her bathroom. Staring at her. Stark naked.

"Shit," he says, Rachel shrieking and trying to grab on to the door to close it shut once more. She scrambles around and finally slams the door shit, Finn turning over his shoulder so that he isn't able to see her.

Rachel leans against the door, panting heavily, the water running noisily in the background.

Well, if Finn wasn't going to give her gray hair before, he certainly is now.

:.:.:

She takes a thirty minute shower, which is practically unheard of in the world of Rachel Berry. She's always the one that never shuts up about water conversation and how much better of a place the world would be if everyone just cut back ten minutes from their shower, but Rachel's singing a different tune today.

There's an exception that needs to be granted to people who have just been seen naked by their worst enemy in high school who's currently living with them.

Rachel wonders if Finn even knew she was in the bathroom. Maybe it was a completely innocent act and he was actually mortified that he had seen her naked.

Of course, she didn't want him to be so stunned that he was unable to realize that she was a young woman standing in front of him, completely naked.

The Rachel in high school would have suspected him to be peeping on her through the crack in the door, just because that was the type of person Finn was in high school who would get a free glimpse at a naked girl any chance he could. The fact that it was Rachel would only cause him to make fun of her afterwards.

The Rachel now, however, felt sympathy for him. Maybe what he had done was an accident after all. He did seem rather shocked, the more she thought about it. His face had turned a bright, blushing like he had just walked in on his mother stepping into the shower instead of her.

She let the thought mill over in her head for a moment. Maybe she was actually disgusting to him. Maybe he was mortified because to him, it _was _like seeing his mother.

Why would he, anyway. He's the same one who stood silent when Quinn Fabray asked her if she chaired the itty bitty titty committee up through her senior year.

Rachel figures that the more she thinks about, the more depressed she'll become. She doesn't want to go back to high school and think about how Finn stood by and said nothing the entire time. It'll just make her want to act the way she did in high school when she got upset – locking herself in her room and listening to her Barbra Streisand albums on repeat until she was told to leave.

She's just a bit more mature than that, she thinks.

She walks into her room stealthily and tries everything in her power to avoid Finn completely, knowing that if she sees him, she'll come close to collapsing. At least she's wearing more than she was the last time he saw her; a towel wrapped around her petite frame. She shuffles across the floor and scurries into her bedroom, rushing over to her closet before dropping her towel.

_All you need to do is find something to wear, _she thinks to herself. _Find something that doesn't scream 'you just saw me naked and know everything about what I look like.' _She pushes a sizeable amount of clothing to one side of her closet, exhaling sharply.

_A habit would be nice right about now._

She decides on some black dress with little white polka dots scattered across it that buttons up in the front and ties in the back, cinching at her waist. The more she thinks about it, the more Rachel realizes that there's no real point in trying to accent all of the features she thinks are her best ones - Finn's seen them all, the good and the bad. For all she knows, he had taken in more than she thinks he would be able to in the amount of time that the door was open.

Or maybe she's just over-processing all of this and needs to get a grip.

Rachel makes her way into the bathroom and starts to blow dry her hair, looking at herself nervously in the mirror. Maybe Finn won't care and nothing will be awkward between them when she walks out into the living room. Maybe everything will be fine and he'll understand how nervous she is about everything and he won't even bring it up.

But Rachel knows that she's not living in a perfect world, and neither is Finn.

Rachel slowly makes her way down the hallway and towards the living room, able to hear the television blaring now that her hair dryer's off. It doesn't sound like Finn's regular programming – no babies talking with British accents, no cursing children, and no people with yellow skin acting drunk. It instead sounds like the news, or at least something of substance.

"Hey," he says, breaking the silence as she walks in. She feels like she's walking on eggshells around him. Finn just turns over his shoulder and looks at her with a smile.

Rachel thinks that he's not just wearing that shit-eating grin for no reason, and suddenly wants to light herself of fire and jump out of her window. It wouldn't be that far of a fall, anyway.

Just enough to kill her but not enough to make her regret it when she got up to Jew heaven, or whatever.

"H-hey," she stammers nervously, pretending to do something with the envelopes that have been piling up on the table by her kitchen counter. She doesn't say anything else and drops a coupon mailer to the floor by her feet. Nervous _and _clumsy, how lovely.

Finn flips the channel on the television. Now it's some Saturday morning cartoon that she vaguely remembers watching growing up.

"Look, Finn, I-"

"No," he says, turning around on the couch, laughing slightly. The more he laughs, the more Rachel realizes that he sounds just as nervous as she does. "Whatever happened was completely my fault, Rachel, and I'm… I'm super sorry about it."

She narrows her eyes as she sets the mailer back on the table with the other envelopes. There's no way he can give up this easy. Sure, she knows that things have gotten (dare she say it) _better_ since Finn's moved in with her, but this isn't him accidentally eating her leftovers in the refrigerator or forgetting to turn the lights off on her car when he comes back from the hospital.

This is him seeing her naked. This is an entirely different ballpark.

"I'm changing the rules, by the way," she says, looking at him and trying her best not to smile. He actually looks like he's being genuinely nice to her, and she's not used to it. "Always knocking on doors is going to be rule number one now."

Finn laughs and she feels his eyes trained on her back as she walks back into the kitchen. "What, so your number one rule is just knocking on doors now? What happened to the first rule you made?"

Rachel looks at the whiteboard on the refrigerator before erasing the first two rules she had made when she and Finn had established them during his first week of residency. He's right, after all. The first rule she had made is the best rule she thinks she had made.

She doesn't say anything and watches him from the couch. He grabs the remote and starts to turn the volume down on the TV.

_Oh, great._

"Look, we don't have to make a big deal out of this or anything, but I'm sorry," he says, shrugging slightly. "I mean, I know you probably think it's pretty awkward, or whatever, but I really don't think the you need to make such a big deal out of anything."

Rachel looks at him, keeping herself from starting to erase the whiteboard on the refrigerator. She glares and sighs, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You saw me _naked, _Finn-"

"Yeah, and it's not going to change anything," he tells her, standing up from the couch and walking up towards her. She feels her heart quiver in her chest the closer he gets to her. He towers over her and she feels like she's being looked down upon like an ant, or something else that's small.

She's always been small and he's always been tall, but she's never actually felt the difference between them as dramatically before.

"Rachel, I don't know what you think I think about you, but I'm not planning on dating you any time soon."

Great. So at least it's out in the open, then.

She feels her heart sink slightly, her throat going dry. "Oh," she says, unfolding her arms from her chest. "Well, I never really thought that, but I… I just didn't want things to be weird between us, that's all."

He laughs at her and smiles; a genuine smile. "I get it," he tells her, sticking his hands in his pockets. There's a beat of silence between them and she turns around, opening a cabinet to grab a coffee mug. If he doesn't want to talk about it, she totally understands. She should be mature enough to understand things like this by now.

"And look, maybe we can go get something for dinner tonight to make up for it."

Rachel turns around and sees Finn still standing there in front of her, a dumbfounded smile stuck to his face.

"My treat."

She can't help the smile that ends up showing up on her face moments later. It's kind of hard not to smile at when he's like this.

"Sure," she tells him, drumming her fingers against the coffee mug. "I'd… I'd like that."

She turns back around and turns on her coffee machine, waiting for it to boot up. She's still afraid to turn around and look back at Finn, but she doesn't mind all too much. Her heart's beating too loudly in her ears for her to fully understand what's going on around her.

"Great," he says, his voice barely audible in her screaming ears. "You can pick where we go and everything, I don't really mind." She turns over her shoulder and smiles softly, feeling her face begin to pink.

Finn's already started to make his way out of the kitchen and back into the living room before turning around.

"Oh, and Rachel?"

"Yes?"

"I never would have pinned you as the type to have a tattoo."

Her face feels like it's on fire and before she can turn around an offer a rebuttal, Finn's already gone. She can hear the bathroom door latch shut behind her in the hall.

Maybe some things are just better left unsaid.

:.:.:

The rest of Saturday goes by slowly, Rachel occupying herself by finishing a book Kurt's leant to her about Judy Garland and taking Berkley out onto the roof and brushing him for the first time in God knows when, all while trying to keep her mind off of whatever might happen during the dinner and she and Finn are scheduled to have for the night.

She doesn't want to admit to herself that he's taking her out just because he's accidentally seen her naked, but she's reduced it to that.

It's better than she's done in a long time. The last guy who saw her naked left without even bothering to ask for her phone number.

By the time Finn starts getting ready for the night, Rachel decides that she should start getting ready as well; trying not to seem like she's trying too hard to impress him.

After all, they're just going to go to Breadstix, or whatever. She doesn't need to pretend like he's taking her to the Academy Awards.

She settles on a little black dress that's been sitting in the back of her closet since the last date she's been on (which ended horribly).

Alright, so maybe it's not smart to wear a dress reserved for dates on something that's clearly not a date, but Rachel doesn't mind all too much. After all, it's just a dress. She looks good in it.

The drive there is mostly quiet, Finn insisting on driving instead of the other way around. Finn says something to her about how she looks nice at one point, and Rachel swears that her entire face turns red.

She keeps on promising herself that she won't let Finn have this effect on her.

Then again, Rachel's always been known for making promises she can't keep.

"So, um, what's the story behind your tattoo?" Finn asks her once they've sat down at the restaurant. They've both exchanged pleasantries with the waiter once or twice and have made their drink orders, but they don't say anything until Finn decides to break the silence with his question.

Rachel looks down into her lap and suppresses a smile, laughing slightly to herself.

"I can't believe you saw that…"

"Come on," he says, whining slightly. "I mean, everybody that gets a tattoo gets one for a reason, right?" She laughs and stirs the straw in her water nervously. She doesn't really want to talk to him about this. She doesn't mind Finn so much anymore, but she doesn't want to talk about this.

"Sure," she says, smiling at him. "I mean, the whole 'everybody gets a tattoo for a reason' thing. I'm not going to tell you."

"Come on."

"No."

Finn looks at her with a smile, tipping his head to the side. "Rachel Berry. You out of all people would not just get a tattoo because you thought it would be cute."

She smiles as she looks at him, crossing her legs underneath the table. He's kind of cute when he wants to be.

"Kurt took me to get it the summer of junior year," she says, picking at her nails nervously. "He told me that he was going to get one too, but he lied. I was too drunk to really remember any of it, anyway."

She watches at Finn looks at her, eyebrows raised as he laughs at what she says. "Rachel Berry getting a drunk tattoo, and before you turned eighteen?" He laughs, wiping a hand across his face. "I thought I'd heard it all, but that takes the cake."

She nudges his leg underneath the table. "Shut up," she tells him, smiling slightly. "I wasn't _that _drunk." For being drunk and going to a place that was willing to give minors tattoos, her tattoo hasn't turned out that bad. She would never, ever get another one in a thousand years, but the one she has doesn't look like a complete piece of shit.

"My junior year wasn't exactly my best year of high school, and Kurt and I were celebrating the end of the year one night and I got drunk, and he suggested that I get a tattoo to – you know, wrap up the year."

She looks at Finn, hoping to see some trace of understanding in his face. He looks like he's trying to remember something, but he doesn't say anything.

"Getting a star just kind of seemed… I don't know. Appropriate. The whole idea of putting it on my hip was just so my parents wouldn't see it and find out."

Finn laughs, taking a sip from his water.

"What, do they not know or something?"

"No," she tells him. Rachel looks at him and the weird feeling of having a conversation with Finn washes over her again, unsure as to what to do about it.

Maybe she should just stop talking.

"Well, maybe if you have another rough patch or whatever, you can get another tattoo," he said.

"I don't think so," she says, her voice soft. She tips her head down into her lap. "I wouldn't know where else to put one."

The two of them look at each other and Rachel feels her stomach clench, feeling like she has to throw up all of a sudden.

It's not in the bad, regular way she felt like she had to throw up when she was around Finn Hudson in high school, however. This is a new, butterflies-in-her-stomach feeling that she doesn't mind as much.

Maybe she can get used to Finn Hudson.


	8. Chapter 8: Then

Their junior year seemed to go by faster than any other year in high school. One blink and the first semester had ended; two blinks and people were already talking about prom.

It scared Finn to think that in less than a year, he would be hearing back from college, having to decide what his future was and everything. It was intimidating, to say the least. Finn never really thought about his future. He always thought about football and video games and girls. College was never really a priority in the back of his mind.

Even though all Quinn could do was remind him about how important college was.

"It's where you decide your future," she told him, trying to convince him that college was a good idea. "I mean, you might not be able to go to school with me, but at least you'll be able to get an education."

He never chose to say anything to Quinn after she had said that to him. Quinn was always ready or bigger, better things in life. She already knew that she was going to be applying at all of the Ivy League schools; Harvard, Yale, Princeton.

He just so happened to be the person who was with her while she figured all of it out.

Finn and Quinn had started to drift apart, anyway. They didn't get into arguments or anything, but they spent less time together. Quinn started to spend more time with Santana and Brittany and less time with him – which he didn't mind. The clinginess of her had worn off, and he didn't mind it in the least.

It gave him more independence to do what he wanted, anyway.

And without always being wrapped around Quinn's finger, Rachel no longer seemed so untouchable to him. Granted, she had a boyfriend of her own and seemed content with whatever kind of relationship she was fostering with him, but Finn still saw Quinn's absence in his life as an opportunity to at least talk to Rachel more often. She was a nice girl; he just never got the chance to see her at her best like other people did.

:.:.:

Finn had chemistry class with Rachel second semester. It was good for him, too, because Finn wasn't good at chemistry. Having Rachel as his lab partner (which he had quickly assigned to himself at the beginning of the semester, much to Rachel's chagrin) made him feel like he actually had a shot at passing the class come June.

She talked to him sometimes. Not often, but every once and a while she would bring up something other than their chemistry worksheets and they would have a real conversation.

One afternoon, she came into class wearing a bright red crewneck t shirt – paired with her instantly recognizable pleated skirt and knee-high socks. It only caught his eye because Rachel never wore t shirts. He could count off on one hand the amount of times that she wore anything other than a dress or a skirt to school.

Not that he was always paying attention to what Rachel was wearing, or anything.

As she sat down next to him, she noticed how the front of her shirt had the words _Oliver! _written across it in big black letters.

(Okay, so he was totally checking out her boobs in her shirt. He just so happened to notice was what written across it and it piqued his interest.)

"What's up with your shirt?" He asked, watching Rachel as she sat down next to him, folding her skirt beneath her. "I've never really seen you wear a t shirt before."

He watched her as she organized her books in front of her, pulling out the pink pen she wrote with every day. She looked like she didn't want to talk to him – ad he couldn't really blame her, either. Quinn wasn't with him, though. Maybe she liked him just as long as he wasn't with Quinn.

"It's for the musicals," she finally said, throwing her hair over her shoulder. "We open tonight."

Finn smiled slightly opening his notebook for the class. "Oh," he said, looking back at her. "That's really cool, Rachel. What's the show?"

"_Oliver,_" she said, still not bothering to look at him. "I'm playing Nancy."

Finn didn't really know who that was, but he figured that it was the lead – or whoever wasn't Oliver, anyway.

"Oh," he said, laughing nervously. "Cool." There was a long pause between them, Rachel still not bothering to look at him.

"Is, um… your boyfriend going?"

She turned to face him, now actually interested in what they were talking about. Finn never spent tons of time walking to Rachel, but he figured that if he wanted to pique her interest, he could talk about her boyfriend. He didn't remember his name, but he knew that she still had a boyfriend. Some big shot who went to Boston Conservatory – which, according to Rachel, was a really big deal. She was completely head over heels for him, and he knew that she was crazy about him.

"He is," she said, beaming proudly. "Tonight, actually." She still didn't say much to him, and he felt bad. He didn't want her to feel uncomfortable around him or anything like that. Besides, there's something about Rachel that makes him want to impress her – or at least win her approval. She seemed so sure of what she wanted to do with her life and had her head straight on her shoulders. The more time he spent around Rachel, the more he realized how great she was.

Maybe she needed a college boyfriend because she was above high school guys.

"How long have you guys been together?" He asked, wringing his hands together underneath the table. He shouldn't have asked her. For all he knew, she was going to go off on some wild tangent about how much she loved her boyfriend and couldn't live without him, making him feel like shit in the proves.

"Almost six months," she told him, turning to look at him for the first time. He watched her as she smiled sweetly, looking like she was really happy with herself. It was like it was the first time she had realized that she had been seeing whoever she was seeing for as long as she had been.

"We're really happy together," she told him, almost boastfully. "He comes down here almost every weekend and sometimes my parents let me go up to see him when we have a three-day weekend or something." Finn looked at her and smiled, watching as she sat up in her chair.

Finn didn't know why he kept on asking her questions about her relationship, but he did.

"Are you guys going out tonight after the show, then?"

"Yeah," Rachel said, her voice falling back into what it had been bored. "He told me that he had something special planned for us, or something."

Finn looked at her as she opened up her notebook, eyes scanning her notes from the lesson from the day before. Clearly, Rachel didn't understand the implications behind what her boyfriend was talking about, or she knew just as well as he did and wanted to be polite about everything.

Chances were that she just wanted to be polite.

"Oh, um, that's great, Rachel," he told her, starting to drum his fingers on the table. "I'm sure you guys have a lot of fun when you see each other – you know, considering that he's always busy in college and everything."

She smiled and started to write down the equation they were supposed to balance that their teacher had written on the whiteboard. Finn looked up at the board and copied it down along with her, he just didn't follow through with the other steps necessary needed to actually _complete___the problem.

"I really like him," she told him, almost proud of the fact that she had been able to say what she had said. Finn's mouth crooked into a small smile and he looked back down at her notebook.

She was busy sketching little test tubes and beakers in her notebook next to the equation she had just balanced, and he was… failing.

No, really. He was failing chemistry and he didn't really know what to do about it.

Finn picked up his pencil and started to write a number next to one of the chemicals, but before he could continue, Rachel stopped him.

"Do you want help with that?"

He nodded his head and leaned back in his chair, watching as Rachel pulled her chair closer to him, leaning over his notebook. She used her pen to cross out what he had written, pink scribbles filling his notebook as he watched her work on whatever she was working on.

Rachel backed away from the notebook and sat up straight in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest like she was proud of what she had just done.

"There," she said, setting her pen down in front of her own notebook. "You just balanced it wrong. You always have to remember where the elements are on the periodic table, that's all." She gestured towards the large periodic table on the wall to the side of the room. "You're not that bad at chemistry, Finn, you just need to practice. That's all."

Finn looked at her and smiled, watching as she looked proud with herself.

"You should be a chemist," he told her, smiling.

Unfortunately, Rachel's smile didn't stay for long. Instead she looked exhausted; like what Finn had said was something completely wrong.

"No," she said, rolling her eyes. "I mean, chemistry's great, but I don't want to be a chemist." Finn laughed and she grabbed her pen again, scribbling in her notebook once more. "One day, Finn, I swear… I'm going to be a Broadway star."

Finn looked at her and smiled, laughing slightly. She spoke about it like it was so serious; grabbing her chest and eyes going wide and not laughing in the slightest.

On anyone else, Finn would think that whatever they were doing was crazy. But it was different with Rachel. With Rachel, it didn't seem like she acted that way simply to get attention or to seem different from the other girls they went to school with.

Rachel seemed like she actually wanted what she chased after.

"Like, an actress, right?"

She started to giggle, hiding her face in her hands for a moment.

"More than an actress," she said, her voice softer. "I want to be a star."

Finn laughed and couldn't look away from her, watching her as she seemed so content with herself. He liked her like this. Happy, smiling, laughing at everything he told her. He had never really had the opportunity to see her like this.

They turned to the front of the classroom as the teacher made their way in front of the whiteboard, beginning to write the answer out to the question Rachel had just answered.

Sure enough, she had been right.

"Well, just don't forget me when you're famous, okay?" Finn asked her, nudging her in the side. Rachel started to laugh and looked at Finn, her face pink.

"Okay," she told him, giggling sweetly. "I promise."

:.:.:

"So, we should start thinking about what our color scheme is going to be for prom," Quinn told Finn later that day. School had ended and she was making her way to her locker, putting her books away for the day. "I was thinking Tiffany blue, but if you had any ideas-"

"I'm going to the musical tonight," Finn said, interrupting her. He watched as Quinn stopped in her tracks, looking up at Finn with a furrowed brow. "I don't know if you want to go with or not, but I'm going." He sighed and watched as Quinn bit down on her bottom lip, looking more furious every second her took to talk to her. "It's supposed to be really good, anyway." He paused, shoving his hands in his pockets nervously. "I'll buy your ticket?"

Quinn slammed her locker shut and crossed her arms over her chest. "This is because of her, isn't it?"

Finn looked at her, confused.

"What?"

"This is because of Rachel Berry and you liking her, or whatever." She rolled her eyes and swung her backpack over her shoulder. "I don't see why you love her so much, Finn. She's gross and doesn't care about anything besides singing and dancing."

Finn sighed and looked at Quinn, feeling his anger boil up inside of him. He normally wasn't one who got angry at the little things (or at least he tried not to be), but he was angry. He seemed to be angrier and angrier at Quinn lately, but it had never gotten that bad until then. He didn't know why, either. Quinn had always been someone he liked spending his time around.

Over time, she had just turned into someone he didn't want to be with at all.

"Well, I'm going to go," he said, his voice becoming harsher. "I really want to see it, and so what if I want to see Rachel in it? I'm sure she's going to be really good."

Quinn rolled her eyes and crossed her arms across her chest furiously.

"You need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid she's giving you and step out of the little Broadway dream she's pulled you into," she warned him, fury buried in her voice. "We're in high school, Finn. None of us are going to grow up and become Broadway stars, or celebrities, or win _American Idol_, okay? We're normal people stuck in a normal town, and she doesn't understand that. The least you can do is stay away from her so you don't end up crazy like her."

Finn sighed and looked down at Quinn, raising his eyebrows. "Yeah, and what happens if I don't?"

Quinn looked at him, scoffing lightly. "You can forget having me as your girlfriend."

Quinn stormed away from him, walking out the doors with her blonde hair following behind her in a mess.

Finn watched her and sighed, turning around to make his way to his own locker.

Maybe losing Quinn wouldn't be the worst idea in the world. If anything, he would be doing it for Rachel.

Unfortunately, someone had already beaten him to the punch when it came to dating Rachel. And judging by the way she spoke about her Broadway-bound Boston Conservatory boyfriend, he wasn't going to get a chance to spend any time with her any time soon.

:.:.:

He ended up going to the musical that night, alone. There really wasn't anyone he could go with; none of his friends cared about anything that didn't have to do with any of the athletic events at their school.

He got a seat that was closer to the audience, but by the time the show started, the auditorium was packed. Finn was surprised that so many people had shown up, and part of him wondered how many of them were people that Rachel knew.

For all he knew, Rachel had invited a bunch of people that they didn't even go to school with to see her – people who probably treated her with a lot more respect than the people at their own school did. Maybe they appreciated her for being able to sing so well and actually knowing what she wanted to do with her life instead of the rest of the people they knew; all debating whether or not to go to real estate school or not once they graduated.

When the lights went down the entire auditorium went silent, and Finn was kind of surprised when Rachel didn't come out on stage right away. Judging by how highly she spoke of the musical and how excited she was to play her part of 'Nancy,' or whatever it was. He couldn't really remember.

After following the story of whoever it was that player Oliver, however (some fifth grader from the elementary school, he later learned), Finn recognized it when Rachel walked on stage alongside another girl who was somehow shorter than her (something he didn't think was medically possible), wearing what he thought was the tightest thing he had ever seen her in.

It was a long, floor-length red dress with sleeves that ended just above her elbows, a corset pulling her waist in and giving her an ample chest and made her hips look wider.

If she wore something like that school every day, Finn would have been lying if he had said that he didn't like it.

She performed really well, and the more she went on and sang and made people in the audience come close to crying, the more Finn realized that she wasn't kidding when she had told him that she wanted to become a Broadway star one day. There was something about her that was captivating and spellbinding and wonderful all at the same time, and although Finn didn't know much about theatre and performing and the like, he knew that those were things that people looked for in actors.

He was able to see that it was something she wanted more than anything else in the entire world, and there was a certain sense of pride that he felt swell up in his chest when he watched her sing.

She was happy. And whether or not he liked her or the people he chose to spend his life with thought she was a good person, she was happy. No one could ever take that away from her.

Rachel had never told Finn that there was a scene where her character ultimately got killed by her abusive boyfriend, so he was kind of surprised when it finally happened. Apparently, if he was following the show correctly, Nancy's boyfriend, Bill Sykes, got so mad with her that he beat her to death.

He kind of wanted to applaud for her once she died, but he didn't. The audience was just stunned into silence and didn't do anything when the scene was over.

Finn thought that must have been a good thing. Rachel must have been so good that people couldn't decide on a reaction to give her about her performance.

:.:.:

When the show had ended, Finn hadn't been made aware of the fact that the cast would be greeting the audience out in the lobby as they left, which he was excited about. He wanted to see Rachel and congratulate her for a job well done, and he was pretty sure that she didn't know that he would be there, either.

For all he knew, however, she didn't want him there.

It didn't take him long to find her; using his height to his advantage to scope her out among the crowd. She's the only one in a brilliant red dress.

She paced around for a while, chewing on her thumbnail with her back turned to Finn. He figured she just didn't notice him, so he tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned around faster than the speed of light.

"Hey," he said, waving awkwardly. He watched a large smile lit up her entire face. "You did really good out there, Rachel."

She smiled and tipped her head up to look at him, her hair falling from the bun it had been in. "Oh my God, Finn," she said, her voice heavy and quiet. "I didn't know you were coming."

"Yeah," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I wasn't really doing anything tonight, and I remembered how you were talking about this in chem today, so I figured I would come." She smiled and started laughing sweetly as he looked down at her. "You were really, really good."

"Thank you," she said, blushing slightly. Her eyes moved around him slowly. "You didn't bring Quinn?"

"Oh, um, she was tired," he said, lying. "I didn't want to make her upset."

A look of relief washed over Rachel's face and her smile got even brighter.

"Well, what a great boyfriend you make," she said, reaching out to touch him on the arm. She giggled sweetly and started playing with her hair absentmindedly, Finn watching her as she seemed to get lost in her own thoughts.

He was about to open his mouth and say something when he noticed a figure come up behind her and tap her on the shoulder.

A taller, recognizable figure with a large bouquet of flowers in his hands.

"Hi!" Rachel practically shrieked as she turned around, noticing her boyfriend standing behind her and practically crushing the flowers he had for her as she wrapped herself around him in a tight embrace. Finn watched them as he became a background character and smiled to himself awkwardly, looking down at his feet to pass the time.

Rachel eventually pulled herself from her boyfriend's embrace and turned back to Finn, arms still wrapped around her boyfriend's frame.

"Finn, you remember Jesse, don't you?"

"Yeah," he says plainly, trying to look like she's piqued his interest. She smiles and looks back up at Jesse, laughing as he started to talk about her.

"You're the one from the bar, right?"

Finn nodded. "Yeah."

"These flowers are beautiful," Rachel gushed, smelling the bouquet Jesse had picked out for her. "Aren't they, Finn?"

"Yeah," Finn started, fumbling with his keys in his pocket. "They're really pretty. Stunning."

"Well, I don't think anyone was as beautiful as you were up there, Rach," Jesse said, Finn feeling like he was ready to throw up. "You were perfect."

Rachel stood up on her toes to kiss him and Finn sighed, shifting his weight on his feet nervously. "Well, I should probably get going," he mused, pulling his keys from his pocket. "I need to get home early anyway."

Rachel turned to face Finn again and smiled, waving at him. "Thanks so much for coming, Finn," she said, her voice soft.

Finn smiled.

If anything, he could just be glad that she was happy about him being there.

Rachel being happy was all he really wanted.


	9. Chapter 9: Now

**Hi everyone! Thank you so much for all of the positive feedback and reviews for this story! I'm really enjoying writing it and I'm really glad you all like it. As for the confusion in the story line, I promise, that will all be cleared up in the end! This chapter should help answer some questions, but I don't want to give everything away just yet. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of the story, and thanks again!**

"There's no way you actually did that."

"No, I'm being honest." Rachel leans back against the fake red leather that covers the booth, snickering to herself as Finn talks. "That time we won the basketball championship senior year, Puck and I ran outside in the snow naked to celebrate."

She giggles like she's never giggled before, wiping tears from her eyes and trying not to smudge her makeup in the process.

She's drunk. And not just tipsy, maybe-I-can-drive drunk. Rachel's so drunk that she nearly falls out of the booth when she laughs.

"You're silly," she tells him, words slurring together. Finn starts to laugh and she laughs along with him, uncrossing her legs beneath the booth.

She wonders just how drunk she really is. She already knows that she's been known to do stupid things while she's drunk – as Kurt or any of her friends from college would attest to.

Maybe she only does stupid things when Finn's a concern of the matter.

She watches him as he looks at her, laughing as she giggles herself.

"Why are you staring at me?" She asks, able to sit up straight for a moment and look at him. His eyes meet hers and she doesn't flinch. Sober Rachel would be ready to duck and cover; feeling her face turn red the moment he actually looked at her. Now, she just looks at him and bites back a laugh.

He smiles and she cocks her head to the side. "You're just… really drunk," he tells her. Rachel reaches across the table and grabs her wine glass (which she's stuck a straw in at some point during their night), aiming the straw into her mouth and failing a few times before finally taking a sip.

She giggles and looks at Finn, tipping her head to the side. "Well, you better take me home then," she says, the inflection in her voice flipping up. Her free hand begins to play with her ponytail that's been thrown over her shoulder.

She's too drunk to understand the implication that came along with what she just said.

:.:.:

Rachel hears Finn say something about how they're going to stop for dessert on the way back to her apartment, which she doesn't oppose. He's the one that's driving, anyway. Rachel's far too drunk to form a complete, coherent sentence, let alone drive.

Besides, it's part of what turns their night into the night that she knows Finn wants it to be, with him driving and everything. He had driven her to the restaurant, so it only made sense that he drove them back to her apartment.

However, now that she's drunk, they're actually able to have a conversation in the car while they're waiting to get from point A to point B.

Finn carefully ushers her out to the car, but she decides to take charge of the situation and loosens the grip he has around her arm, causing her to try to bolt to her car. It doesn't matter either way. Finn has the keys and she's too drunk to drive.

Still, it's her car. She should at least have permission to run to her own car.

"How the hell do you run in those?" Finn asks her, approaching her from behind after a few moments of Rachel waiting for him to unlock the doors.

She shrugs and giggles, playing with her ponytail again.

"I don't know," she tells him, laughing as he unlocks her door. She begins to climb into the car, still being mindful of how the skirt of her dress falls in her lap when she sits down. "I'm short. I've been wearing heels for a while now."

She watches him as he laughs, actually seeming to enjoy whatever she has to say.

She misses it, even in her drunken stupor. This is the Finn she likes to spend time with; the Finn she misses from high school. He's the same Finn who went to see her in the musical without her having to ask, the Finn who told her she looked pretty even on the days she felt at her worst.

Sometimes, all Rachel wishes for is for the Finn she met on prom night never to come back into her life. She doesn't want it and she doesn't need it, and she doesn't think that he does, either.

She watches him as he slides into the car and sticks the key into the ignition, turning it and starting the heat and radio again. The music begins to filter through the speakers and Rachel recognizes the song after a while, a toothy smile spreading across her face the longer it plays.

"Turn it up!" She doesn't bother to fasten her seatbelt and instead squirms around in her chair, listening to the song.

It's not a very fast song, and it's not one with an actual danceable beat.

Finn looks at her and smiles. "You like The Lumineers?" She's drunk. It's not like she's going to give him that accurate of an answer.

"I like this song," she says, finally strapping her seatbelt across her chest. He laughs and watches as she bounces up and down in her seat to the kick drum beat of the song, enjoying herself with him more than ever. He puts the car in reverse and begins to back out of their parking spot, Rachel still in her own world as the song plays.

"Finn," she coos, turning to look at him quickly. She nearly hits him in the face with her ponytail as she turns her head, but he doesn't seem to mind. He spits out a laugh and she giggles. "Sing along. I know you know the words."

He laughs and looks at her, lip-synching along to the radio.

"You're not even singing!"

"I won't sing until you start singing." She figures it's a fair trade. She wants to hear him sing, anyway. For all she knows, Finn has a beautiful singing voice. She just hasn't heard it yet. "Come on," she says, nudging him as he turns a corner, continuing to egg him on.

She laughs and sings the chorus – more so shouts it, but she doesn't care.

_I belong with you, you belong with me, you're my sweetheart,  
I belong with you, you belong with me, you're my sweet-_

"Sing the song with me!" She says, now practically yelling at him. She watches as Finn laughs, looking back at her again.

"Fine," he says, laughing. "Just… wait for the chorus to end."

She giggles and looks at him, watching him as he starts to sing.

_I don't think you're right for him, look at what of might have been,  
If we took a bus to Chinatown, I'd be standing on Canal,  
And Valerie-_

"No!" She says, shouting. "It's Bowery."

Finn looks at her, confused.

She looks at him like he's just made the biggest mistake in the entire world. "Canal and Bowery, they're two streets in New York."

He smiles, rolling his eyes. "Oh."

They stop talking just in time for the chorus to kick in again. This time, both of them continue to sing – and it isn't melodic like Rachel's used to, but she doesn't care.

_I belong with you, you belong with me, you're my sweetheart,  
I belong with you, you belong with me, you're my sweetheart._

Rachel looks at Finn with a smile, tipping her head up in the air like she's chanting something.

_Love, we need it now,  
Let's hope for some._

Finn looks down at her and laughs, watching as she turns the dashboard into an air drum kit, rapping her fingers against it like she's the next Sheila E, or some other famous drummer.

He decides to join in with her on the second verse of the bridge.

'_Cause oh, we're bleeding out,  
I belong with you, you belong with me, you're my sweetheart,_

Rachel points to Finn and looks like she's pretending to be a singer on American Idol, causing Finn to start laughing. The song finishes playing on the radio and the DJ changes it to some other folksy-sounding song, Rachel reclining back in her chair and laughing hysterically.

She catches her breath and watches as Finn looks at her, laughing.

"I've never heard you sing like that before," he tells her, causing her to laugh even more. "Screaming and shouting and everything."

Rachel giggles and looks down into her lap, playing with the hem of her dress. "Well, I'm drunk, remember?"

They both laugh and she looks out the window, watching the lights pass by as they continue on their way to wherever it is Finn's taking them for dessert.

"Have you ever been to New York before, Rachel?"

She looks at him and shakes her head, gaze dropping back down to her lap. "No," she says, almost as if she's ashamed of the fact. "I really want to go one day, though."

She speaks as though it's a long lost dream; one she'll never get back no matter how hard she tries.

No matter what happens now, however, her mind still carries the thought of New York in the back of it. She's twenty five and has a successful job (well, quasi-successful). She shouldn't be hoping to fly out to New York one day with twenty dollars in her pocket and a dream. That ship should have sailed a long, long time ago.

Finn laughs and turns into a parking lot. She looks out the window, wondering where they are. She doesn't get out much. She's a music teacher to elementary schoolers, not a wild child. Rachel's turned into somewhat into a recluse. She goes home after work and watches _The Bachelor _while Berkley sits on her lap and she goes through half a jar of guacamole.

She never, ever does stuff like this.

"Well, if you're going to go, why don't you just go?" He asks, looking down at her with a smile. Finn keeps the car running as they sit in the parking lot, Rachel spending more of her time eyeing up the Baskin-Robbins than listening to him. "I mean, we're twenty five, Rachel. In like, five years, you're probably…"

His voice trails off and she turns to face him; the absence of his voice drawing her attention. She giggles and unbuckles her seatbelt, leaning over so that she's closer to his lap.

"What's that?" She asks, giggling sweetly. She watches as Finn sighs and looks down at her, hands clasped together and resting against her chest.

"Well, you know. You're like, gonna be a mom and stuff. You're not going to have time to go out to New York and do what you want to do out there."

She flubs her lips and starts to laugh, rolling her eyes. "Please," she says, her words beginning to slur again. "I'm twenty five and single. I'm not going to be a wife and have kids any time soon." She sighs, sitting back up and leaning back in her chair. She begins to play with the hem of her dress again, pulling it further up her legs and watching as Finn's eyes followed, not caring as much as she once would have.

Finn sighs and looks at her, smiling sympathetically. "Come on, Rachel. You're going to be married in five years." He pauses and wipes his face, shaking his head slightly. "You've got the world ahead of you, Rachel. Like, in five years, you're going to be married with a baby and all happy and everything.

"No," she says, frowning slightly. Rachel begins to giggle to herself, rolling her eyes. She starts to chew on her bottom lip, her alcohol intake once again affecting how freely she speaks to him. "Did you know that I haven't been on a real date in three years?" She watches as Finn raises her eyebrows at her, causing her to nod her head quickly. "Yeah. I haven't slept with anyone in about two years."

He looks at her and she turns her head over to look at him. She normally wouldn't be talking about how love life (or lack thereof) to anyone, especially Finn. She doesn't even tell Kurt about the people she dates and the people she sleeps with.

Apparently, the four and a half glasses of red wine she's had tonight are telling her to do otherwise.

"Rachel, you don't have to do this-"

"I broke up with Jesse before prom," she says, words spilling out of her mouth as she continues to prattle on about herself. "He called me a prude and said that he didn't want to waste his time dating someone in high school who wasn't willing to sleep with him." She looks away from Finn and turns her head to look out the window, her car still running in the parking lot. "That was why I went to prom alone junior year."

She starts to tap her fingers against the glass of the window, flubbing her lips slightly.

Finn turns the car off and looks at her, sighing. "Come on," he tells her, touching her arm lightly. Rachel turns to look at him, eyes heavy-lidded and lips pouted due to her drunkenness. "I'll buy you an ice cream cone."

She sighs and opens the door, stumbling out of the car before Finn walks up to her and grabs her by the hand. She looks up at him, wondering why he's taken her by the hand and holds her so tightly. She's not dating him. He shouldn't want to grab her by the hand and walk around with her like she's some kind of trophy for him to show off. He hasn't earned her and he hasn't done anything to make her want him.

But the longer she spends with him, even with the booze in her blood, the more she wonders about what it would feel like if she could have that kind of relationship with him.

Finn pushes the door to open to the Baskin-Robbins, dragging Rachel in behind him. She stumbles around in her shoes for a moment, her own hand still clasped in Finn's.

They stand in front of the buckets of ice cream, Rachel looking down at them with wide, bright eyes. She hasn't exactly been to Baskin-Robbins too many times. No one's really bothered to ask her on a date in a while.

"Do you want a cone or a bowl?" He asks, still holding on to her hand. She stares up at him and blinks once before looking down at their conjoined hands.

He drops his hand quickly and wipes his hands off on his pants.

She doesn't say anything.

He ultimately decides on getting her bowl, because she knows that if she gets a cone she won't be able to handle balancing all of the scoops of ice cream on the cone.

Rachel leans against him and sighs, looking down at the ice cream again with wide eyes. "You pick out the flavor," she says, poking in his sides. She feels his stomach against her fingers and laughs, resting her chin against his chest.

He shrugs, pushing her off of him slightly. "There's fifty-two flavors, Rachel. You pick one."

"Umm... mint chocolate chip."

Finn looks at her and smiles, walking up to the cashier and placing her order.

She wants to follow behind him, but before she really gets a chance to walk up to him, the bells hanging over the door begin to ring and a familiar figure walks into the store.

Kurt.

At first, her liquored brain doesn't make the connection that she's standing in an ice cream parlor with Finn Hudson, hair curled and wearing a tight, black dress that makes her boobs look really nice.

It almost looks like they're on a date.

But she watches him walk up to her, eyebrows raised and head cocked to the side.

"Rachel?" He asks, walking up to her. She swallows thickly and looks at him before attempting to run up to him and catch him in an embrace.

"Oh, Kurt!" She says, nearly crashing into him upon touching him. "I'm so glad you're here," she gurgles, laughing as she looks up at him. "I'm here with Finn, and he took me out to dinner – well, as an apology, because he accidentally saw me naked-"

"He saw you naked?"

"Yeah," she continues, like it's no big deal or that Kurt won't think it's weird when it's taken out of context. "But we went out to dinner and we sang my car, and now he's taking me here for dessert and then we're going back home." Her words all slur together like one big sentence that seems like it's never going to end.

She watches as Kurt looks down at her, shock painted on his face. "Rachel," he says, grabbing her by the arms. He watches her as she looks up at him, smiling dumbly. "Are… are you drunk?"

She nods her head quickly and bursts into a fit of giggles. "Yup," she says, playing with her bangs as they fall in her eyes. "But s'fine, because Finn said that he's going to take me home and make sure I'm alright." She starts to laugh and a hiccup escapes her, causing her to bring a hand up to her face to cover her mouth.

"Rachel," Kurt starts, holding onto her tightly. "You need to go home. Without Finn. Do you understand?"

She shakes her head, pouting at him. "No, Kurt. I have to go home with Finn. We're living together." He rolls his eyes and she notices, scoffing. "Not like that," she says, swatting at his chest. "You're gross, Kurt." She starts to laugh again and notices as Finn turns over his shoulder to look at her. "I'm helping him until he's better again." She starts to laugh and leans into Kurt again, smiling as she looks up at him. "I'm like a nurse, Kurt."

Kurt looks down at her, refusing to release the grip he has on her. "Rachel, you need to go home. Have Finn take you home and go to bed, alright? You're drunk and you need to go to bed."

She sputters out a laugh and looks at him, guffawing slightly. "Just buy your ice cream and leave," she tells him, watching as Finn walks up to her. She smiles brightly as he presents her with the dish of ice cream she's wanted. She wraps her arms around him, surprising him and causing him to jump slightly.

"Finn Hudson," Kurt says, his voice sounding bitter. Rachel's too concerned over squeezing all of the air out of Finn to pay attention to what Kurt's doing. "I haven't seen you in… well, since high school."

"Yeah," Finn says, looking down at Rachel. "It's great to see you too, um… Kurt."

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest and pops a hip out to one side, looking down at Rachel. "You're… you're staying with her?" He points down at Rachel as she continues to stumble around in her drunken mess, taking the occasional spoonful of ice cream from time to time.

"Yeah," Finn says, looking at Kurt. Rachel finally releases her grip around him and looks down at her feet, listening to Finn stammer as he goes on. "But, um, we're n-not a thing, or anything. I'm just-"

"He got shot in the leg," Rachel exclaims, gesticulating with her plastic spoon. "But it's not even that bad anymore. It's not like you're even on your crutches anymore, right Finn?"

Kurt looks down at Rachel, eyes wide.

"Well, just make sure she gets back to her house alright, okay? Or your house, or whatever you call it."

Rachel nods her head and smiles up at Kurt.

"Don't worry," she says, feeling Finn take her by the arm and lead her out the doorway. "We will."

:.:.:

She stumbles into her apartment, laughing hysterically – at what, she doesn't know. She can feel Finn behind her, guiding her through the narrow hallway into her living room. Rachel stops and turns around to face Finn, nearly collapsing into his chest.

She giggles and tips her head up to stare at him, eyes glazed over and half open.

"You know, I'm glad I was honest with you tonight," she tells him, resting her hands against his chest. Drunk Rachel should make an appearance more often. She's starting to feel more comfortable around him by the second. Maybe that's the key to being around Finn; alcohol. If she gets drunk every time they're together, maybe he won't cause her to go gray by the time she turns thirty.

Finn tips his head to the side and looks down at her, curious as to what she's talking about. "What?"

"You know, about Jesse and everything. You didn't need to hear that." She feels her face begin to get warmer and she looks up at him, able to see the freckles on the underside of his chin. She's sees him from this angle most of the time, anyway. She's almost positive that she's never seen Finn's face full-on before; she's that much shorter than she is.

He lets his hands grasp her by the waist and she smiles, not wanting his hands to move for the first time. They're so big and feel like they fit around her waist perfectly, making her feel like he could pick her up right off the floor without a problem.

"It's fine," he says, laughing sweetly. She shakes her head and he smiles.

"No," she says. "I mean, I shouldn't have brought up high school and everything… it's almost been ten years, and we don't need to talk about all of that…"

"Stuff?"

She giggles. "Yeah. Stuff."

Rachel brings her hand up to the top of her head and pulls the elastic from her hair, causing it to fall down behind her back and shoulders in a mess of curls. She pops her foot up in the air and leans into him, causing him to start laughing.

Rachel starts to stand up on her toes and laughs slightly; able to smell the alcohol on her breath the closer she is to Finn. Her lips come close to his and she doesn't stop giggling, her hair falling in her eyes.

"Okay," Finn says, looking down at her with a red face. "We should probably get you to bed."

She backs away from him and smiles, his hands still not moving from her wait.

"Will you carry me, though?"

"What?"

"Carry me to my bedroom."

Her eyes fall shut and before she knows it her feet are off the ground; Rachel wrapping her arms around Finn's shoulders and letting her head fall against his chest.

Maybe he means more to her than she's willing to admit.


	10. Chapter 10: Then

Finn tried everything he could to forget about Rachel after seeing her in her show. Even though they sat next to one another in chemistry, he didn't say much to her. Rachel would turn her head out the window every once and a while and make a remark about the weather, and Finn would just nod along with her before returning back to his notes. Sometimes, when he was having a tough time on a certain unit, he would ask Rachel if she could help him get through one of the problems, but that was about the extent of their conversations.

He figured that the less time he spent talking to Rachel, the easier she would be to forget.

Prom was fast approaching and Quinn had already started planning out their campaign for prom king and queen. She would drag Finn away from his locker during the day with examples of the posters she wanted to print and hang up around the school and paint swatches, of all things, to compare what colors they would look best in as a couple.

"I just want everything to be perfect," she told him, grabbing him by the hand one day in the hallway and following him to the only class they had together. "I mean, you only have one junior prom, Finn. Don't you want to make it our best prom ever?"

Finn always got confused whenever she started talking about things like this, because he didn't see why one night was so important to so many girls. It wasn't just Quinn; every single girl in the school that cared about whatever people thought of her was busy talking to her friends during class or lunch about what color her dress was, or where they were going to have to get reservations for dinner before prom, or whether or not it would be in bad taste to get a hotel room for the night after the dance had ended.

He didn't think he would ever understand, especially with the way Quinn talked about it.

"Don't we have senior prom then?" He asked her, genuinely curious. "I mean, we can always go to prom next year. Why does this year have to be so perfect?"

Quinn looked at him like he had just insulted her. "It's prom, Finn." She spoke of it like it was the biggest even of their high school careers. "You only get two shots at it, so why wouldn't we want to make this one as good as we possibly could?" Finn sighed and looked down at Quinn, letting go of her hand for a moment to hold the door open for her.

"Yeah, I mean, I guess I get it," he said, his voice trailing off as he let her walk ahead of him. "I just… it's just a dance. Like, I don't want to spend tons of money just for one night." He only made so much money working at the grocery store down the street as a bag boy, and he already knew from experience that Quinn had expensive tastes.

"But it's prom," she offered in rebuttal, like it was stupid that he was even bringing something up about it. "We're going, and we're going to be prom king and queen, and we're going to have the best time," she told him; making everything she suggested something that wasn't optional. "Hurry up."

He lagged behind her slightly and was able to catch up before she started throwing a tantrum over that.

Finn wouldn't have put it past her, anyway.

:.:.:

Quinn had been hinting at the fact that she wanted to sleep with Finn before prom, and while he wasn't completely opposed to the idea, it did seem rather daunting. It wasn't like it was just any other girl, either; he would be doing it with Quinn, who was the most high-maintenance, needy girl he had ever come across.

Finn, of course, was a virgin, and whose knowledge of sex didn't extend much past the porno videos he had seen on the Internet and what Puck had told him about all of the girls he had hooked up with in the past.

He was in chemistry when the idea dawned on him – and as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he regretted it.

"Rachel, what do girls expect their first time to be like?"

His face turned red and he looked back down at his notebook like he hadn't said anything, hoping that in doing so, Rachel wouldn't notice that he had said anything.

Unfortunately, she did.

Rachel turned to face Finn, her face blanched. From what Finn could see in his peripherals, she looked like she had just seen a ghost. The stoichiometry worksheet they were supposed to be working on was left in front of her, untouched.

"Um, Finn, I don't really think I'm the right person to answer that question for you."

Good. At least she wasn't actually ready to give him an answer.

Finn looked back up at her, watching as she continued to stare at him. He didn't know what it was, but Rachel had changed ever since she had started dating Jesse. She appeared more mature beyond her years; walking through the hallways at school like she was that much better than the other girls simply because her boyfriend was in college and their boyfriends were either meat headed jocks on the football team or burnouts that had nothing better to do than smoke a joint between classes. She had highlighted her hair and had started to wear her patterned dresses and animal sweaters less often.

Rachel was trying to be a mature woman, as far as Finn was concerned. He just wasn't sure if anyone gave a damn whether or not she did.

"I know," he said, watching as Rachel gnawed on her eraser nervously. There was a beat of awkward silence between them. "I just… you're one of the only friends I have that's a girl, so I figured you would know… and stuff."

Rachel blushes and looks at Finn, dropping her pencil in front of her on her paper.

She didn't say anything while they looked at each other, Rachel clearing her throat nervously.

"You don't need to answer if you don't want to."

"No," she said, interrupting him, almost too eagerly. "I mean, no, I don't mind, I just…" Her voice trails off nervously, Finn looking at her sympathetically. She sighs and looks down into her lap, nails scratching against her skirt.

"No one's ever really asked me that before."

He laughed nervously and looked back down at his worksheet, which he had been making some progress on. Finn wasn't completely terrible at chemistry anymore (even though stoichiometry would later prove to be a completely different animal all together), and he liked to think that Rachel was a big reason as to why that was true.

"You're curious because of… you and Quinn, right?" She asked him, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Finn nodded and looked up at her, watching as she seemed to be more comfortable with talking to him.

"Y-yeah," he stammered, wringing his hands together nervously. "You know, prom's coming up and she really wants to make everything really special, and I just… I don't know, I don't know what girls want when it comes to that kind of stuff."

"Well, it is a very important night," she told him, raising her eyebrows and nodding along to what he had been saying. "But I don't really think it's the actual…" Her voice trailed off, the word stopping before she had the chance to say it. "Actually doing it, I mean, that's the important part."

Finn looked at her, smiling sympathetically. He felt like he was putting her in a position she didn't want to be put in and part of him felt bad – but if she didn't want to talk about it, he would have let her stop whenever she wanted.

"When you have sex with someone for the first time, Finn, it's like you're giving yourself to them," she explained, wiping her hands off on her lap. "A lot of guys think that it's just about having sex and getting it over with, or whatever, but for girls… it's a lot more important than that."

Finn looked at her as she spoke, sounding like she cared so much about what she was saying. It made him wonder if she had already lost her virginity and given herself to someone, but the longer he let himself think about it, the worse he knew he would end up in the long run. Rachel wasn't his to worry about. She was his friend – maybe, if he actually treated her like a friend more often, and he wasn't supposed to think about what she did with other guys. He had his own girlfriend to worry about things like that with.

Rachel cleared her throat and looked at Finn, looking like she had forced a smile onto her face. "So, um, what were you planning on doing for her?"

"Oh, um, I don't know," he started, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. Rachel looked at him, eyes wide and her brow furrowed. "Like, I know we were going to get a room at the Marriot down the street, but I don't know if I should like, get her a bottle of champagne, or like, leave rose petals on the bed, or whatever." He started to laugh slightly, looking at Rachel with a smile. "Girls don't actually like all of that romantic shit, do they?"

Rachel giggled softly and looked down into her lap again, like she was afraid to look at him. "Well, I don't think I would really like something like that, but it all depends, I suppose." She turned her head up to look at him and started to play with the necklace she was wearing that day. "Just… get her a room and make sure to pay attention to her that night. Like, maybe rent her favorite movie or buy her her favorite candy or something like that. Just make sure she knows that you love her."

Finn smiled and nodded his head like he was trying to record everything Rachel had said in the back of his head. "Anything else?"

Rachel waited for a moment, tipping her head to the side like she was trying to remember what she was going to say. "Just make her feel loved," she reminded him, her voice soft. "That's what anyone's first time is about, really. It's about showing someone how much you love them and how important they are to you."

He nodded and looked at her with a smile, laughing slightly. "Okay," he said, watching her as she laughed. "I'll make sure to do that."

They didn't talk for a long period of time after that; Rachel dedicating herself to finishing her worksheet and Finn dedicating himself to looking through his text messages on his phone.

When Rachel finally finished and got up to turn her worksheet in, Finn decided he would talk to her again when she sat back down. He thought it was unfair that they were supposed to be friends and yet, he didn't spend much time talking to her outside of their chemistry class.

"So, um, what are your plans for prom?" He asked her, watching as she tucked her skirt under her legs as she sat down.

"Um, nothing really," she said, stacking her notebooks on top of each other. "I'm on the prom committee, so I kind of need to be there, but Jesse's not going."

Finn raised his eyebrows. "He's not?"

"No," she continued, playing with her hair. "He's um, he can't make it back here in time to get back to Boston, so he's just not going." Finn nodded and watched her as she sighed deeply, fixing her hair again.

"Well, I'm sure he's going to see you soon," Finn said. He wanted her to feel better about what she was talking about. Clearly, Rachel didn't feel comfortable talking about her and Jesse, or whatever his name was in front of him, and Finn didn't want to make her feel bad. "You seemed like you really like him when I met him."

"Yeah," she said, looking away from him again. "We'll have all of the summer to spend time with each other, anyway."

He smiled as she looked at him, laughing sweetly. "Well, I guess I'll see you at prom," he told her as the bell rang. "I'm sure you're going to look awesome."

Rachel smiled and stood up from her chair, following after him. "T-thanks," she stammered, holding her books close to her chest.

Finn looked over his shoulder at her and shot her one last smile before turning the corner going in the opposite direction she was.

They could survive as friends.

:.:.:

"Alright, so I'm thinking that you get either Tiffany blue to match my dress, or silver to match my shoes-" Quinn turned to look at Finn, who seemed to be paying more attention to a rack of red ties than what she was pointing out to him. "Finn, are you listening to me?"

Finn snapped his head around to look at Quinn, who looked back at him with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. She didn't look too happy with him – not that she ever looked very happy with him to begin with.

"Yeah," he said, lying as he dropped the red tie that was in his hands. He had been dragged along with Quinn to pick out a tie that would match the color of the dress she had bought for prom with Santana and Brittany.

Unfortunately, Finn wasn't expecting the day to be the gran affair that it had ended up becoming.

"Oh, yeah?" Quinn asked, looking up at him indignantly. "What did I just say, then?"

Finn's starting to feel like Quinn is taking more of a role as his mother than as his girlfriend.

"I don't remember," he said, trying to play off her anger with a goofy smile, looping an arm around her waist. "But c'mon, Quinn. Let's just look around and talk. We never talk anymore."

Quinn rolled her eyes and broke away from him, walking towards the wall with the blue ties. The formal wear was organized by color; the blues on one wall and the red on another, the oranges fading into the yellows and the greens – although Finn couldn't think of a situation where someone would need to wear an orange, yellow or green tie.

"Let's just find your tie," she told him, picking a handful off of the wall and holding them up to his chest. "We can talk after all of this."

Finn rolled his eyes and took the ties from her, watching her as she crossed her arms over her chest and looked studied them dutifully – the ties, not him.

"This one's the exact color of my dress, but this one's just a shade lighter…"

"Why did you pick out a blue dress, anyway?" Finn asked, genuinely curious and serious with his question. "The theme's 'A Night in Paris,' isn't it?" He laughed, but if only to himself. "I don't know if blue's super Parisian, or whatever."

Finn watched as Quinn rolled her eyes and him. "We decided on blue because I thought it would be the color that we would both look the best in," she said, scoffing slightly. "Besides, the theme is stupid this year." Of course, Quinn actually had the right to make a comment about how stupid she thought the theme was; she had gone the year before with some senior guy. "Whoever thought that 'A Night in Paris' was a good idea for a prom theme should be punished for their lack of creativity."

Finn shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. "Rachel did, actually."

He regretted saying what he had the moment the words slipped out of his mouth.

"Of course she did," the blonde said, rolling her eyes. "God, she will just do anything for attention, won't she?"

"I don't think she was looking for attention, really," Finn said, walking towards Quinn and crossing his arms over his chest. "She's on the prom planning committee, or whatever. She told me that she wanted to have more extra-curriculars under her belt for when she started applying to colleges, or whatever."

Quinn rolled her eyes and began chewing on her lip. "Well, she'll get all of the attention she wants on prom night," she said, snickering to herself. Finn's eyes went wide and he looked at her, confused.

"What?"

Quinn just smiled and placed her hands on her hips, like she was proud of what she had just done. "Let's just say that we have a little surprise planned for Rachel on prom night, that's all." Finn turned to look at her, genuinely concerned by now. He knew how Quinn worked – and while she was normally afraid to actually execute anything that would make her seem like a bad person, she was always ready to help someone do something horrible, just as long as her name wasn't the one branded across it for the rest of eternity.

"Have you ever seen the movie _Carrie, _Finn?"

Finn nodded slowly and backtracked for a moment, trying to remember what that movie was all about. Some girl who able to throw forks with her mind, or something – but the longer he thought about it, the faster he was able to make the connection Quinn had been wanting him to make.

"Quinn, you can't do something like that-"

"I can't, can I?" She laughed and folded her arms over her chest. "Santana and I paid off some freshman to rig up a bucket of fruit punch to dump on her when she goes up to announce whoever wins for prom king and queen." Quinn continued like it was something that was supposed to happen, and that it was no big deal that she would ever be doing anything like it. "So, when we win, I guess we'll have front row seats to the show."

Finn couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Woah," he said, confused. "Quinn, you can't do that. That's… what did Rachel ever do to you?"

"She took you away from me," Quinn quipped, her words biting. "She's always pretended like she was your girlfriend, or your best friend, or whatever. She deserves to get what's coming to her."

Finn walked up behind Quinn as she stormed away from him, trying to console her as best as he could.

Even if he didn't want her to feel better, he knew in doing so made Rachel's humiliation stand a chance of being stopped.

"Quinn, Rachel's a lot nicer than you think she is," he told her, trying everything he could to make her feel better. He didn't want to risk Rachel falling into a million pieces in front of the entire junior and senior class. "I just, I don't see why you hate her so much."

"I don't hate her," Quinn said, looking down at her feet. She almost looked like she was being sympathetic towards the other girl. Finn couldn't tell. He didn't have the ability to read people. "I just, I don't see why she thinks that she's so great and can waltz into your life whenever she wants to. She's a slut."

Finn furrowed his brow and looked at her, completely confused. "Quinn, she's not… she has a boyfriend, and she's never even tried anything like that with me before. You need to… you need to stop whatever you're planning on doing."

Quinn rolled her eyes and pressed her hands against Finn's chest. "You probably think I'm some psychosomatic bitch," she said, starting to sound like she had some kind of sympathy in her voice. She sighed and shut her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose like she was nervous. "Look, I didn't… I mean, I wasn't… I was _kidding_," she said, laughing to herself. "I mean, as much as I don't like Rachel, I would never do something like that," she explained, pressing a hand to her chest. "It would ruin my reputation."

Finn scoffed and rolled his eyes as she continued to laugh.

"Look, I'm sorry," she said, sounding as genuine as possible. "Just… I'd appreciate it if you didn't spend as much time with her, that's all." Finn sighed as he looked at her, letting the idea mill around in his head for a while.

It may just be Quinn's weird way of apologizing. She'd never been very good at being sympathetic and actually meaning something when she apologized.

"Fine," he said, touching her hair and pushing it out of her eyes. "Just… be nicer to her, alright? Even if that means avoiding her all together. Rachel's a nice girl, I promise."

Quinn smiled and grabbed Finn by the hand. "Alright," she said, giggling to herself. "That's fine."

:.:.:

Prom ended up being a huge success. When Finn pulled his car up with Quinn to the front door of the school, it already looked different; the pink lighting from inside streaming through the windows and the music blaring from inside. Quinn had even looked like she liked the decorations, saying something about them once she stepped out of Finn's car.

"Wow," she said, nodding her head as they looked around. "It actually looks kind of nice."

Finn knew that Rachel wasn't the only person on the prom committee, but knowing how she operated, he could only assume that she was the ringleader behind everything. She was probably the one picked out the theme and the one who called to hire the DJ and who walked around the gym one final time before the doors open to make sure that everything ended up looking up to par.

"Yeah," he said, fishing their tickets out of his pocket. He lowered his voice and smiled, if almost to himself. "She did a really nice job."

The inside was just as nice as it looked outside; if not nicer. There was an Eiffel Tower wrapped in Christmas lights set up in the corner and the dance floor was packed to capacity, some song from the radio being played at full blast through the gym. Every square inch of the ceiling was covered in pink, silver and white balloons, the lighting matching the color scheme of the balloons and table cloths and decorations.

Quinn walked in and let go of Finn's hand, shrieking as she seemed to notice someone on the dance floor that she recognized.

"I'm going to go dance with Santana," she said, smiling brightly. "I'll dance with you later tonight, I promise."

He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Quinn was running into the crowd of people on the dance floor, quickly being intercepted into Santana's arms. He saw the raven-haired girl in the red dress Quinn had been describing on the car ride over and she waved at him, smiling smugly before dragging Quinn back into the crowd of dancers.

Finn didn't really mind. He figured he could just grab a glass of punch (and one for Quinn later on) and wait by the punch bowl for her or something.

By the time he had made it over to the punch bowl and ladled himself a glass, he hadn't bothered to get one for Quinn. Finn spent his free time looking at the decorations and thinking about how hard it must have been for Rachel to blow up all of the balloons that covered the ceiling of the gym.

Of course, by the time he finished asking the question to himself in his head, Rachel had surprised him.

"You never told me you were coming alone," she said from behind him, surprising him and sending a chill up his spine. Finn spun around quickly and nearly choked when he saw Rachel.

If he hadn't recognized her voice, he certainly wouldn't have recognized her just by looking at her.

Rachel was wearing a white, strapless, floor-length number that cinched at her waist and was embellished with rhinestones that glittered underneath the lights in the gymnasium. Her hair framed around her face and had been set into loose curls that fell down her back, her bangs pinned back out of her eyes.

She looked beautiful – more beautiful than Finn ever would have expected.

"Hey," he said, watching as she walked up to him. The skirt of her dress trailed behind her, her hair fanning out around her face. "Quinn's out on the dance floor somewhere," he explained, watching as Rachel ladled herself her own glass of punch.

"Right," she said between sips. "You're not just standing here awkwardly hoping that some girl will come up and ask to dance with you."

Finn looked at her, watching as she looked at him with a smile. "I'm kidding," she said, pushing her hair away from her eyes. "I think it's good that she's not just dancing with you all night. It makes her seem less clingy."

"Isn't there some rule about not wearing a white dress to stuff?" He asked, gesturing down to her dress with a smile. Rachel shook her head and started to laugh.

"That's to a wedding," she said, leaning against the table where the punch bowl was. "I thought I looked nice tonight."

"You do," he told her, hoping she wasn't taking him seriously.

Judging by the way she was laughing at everything he was saying, however, she didn't seem to be taking him too seriously.

Once he had complimented her, however, her face started to turn red underneath the bright lights and she started giggling nervously. Her head tipped down and she looked at her feet, almost looking like she was afraid to speak to him.

"T-thanks," she said, stammering nervously. Rachel took another sip from her punch and looked out towards the dance floor.

"The decorations are awesome, by the way," Finn told her, watching her as she looked back up at him again.

"Thanks," she said, tipping her head up to the ceiling. "You would not believe how long it takes to blow up 500 balloons."

"No way." He looked at her with wide eyes. "That's how many there are?"

She nodded and sighed, like it was some masterpiece she had just completed. "Yeah. I mean, it's not the Sistine Chapel, but you know…" Her voice trailed off and they both started laughing, Rachel leaning into Finn's side slightly.

The music changed and an upbeat rock song started to play, extracting a cheer from the crowd. Rachel turned to Finn and her face lit up, grabbing him by the arm.

"Dance with me," she said, starting to pull him towards the dance floor before he got a real chance to give her an answer. Finn nearly tripped over his own two feet before she ended up in front of him, not really touching him or grabbing onto any part of him; dancing in front of him and jumping up and down to the song that was being pumped through the gym.

He laughed as she pumped her fist in air and jumped up and down, lips synching along with the words in the song. She didn't dance like the other girls with their dates; backs pressed into their chests and grinding their hips into the waists of their dates to a song that wasn't even about sex.

Finn was positive that it was how Quinn was dancing with Santana at the moment, but he didn't care. The only person he could really pay attention to was Rachel – he _was _dancing with her, after all.

"Why'd you ask me to dance with you?" He asked, shouting slightly above the music. Rachel spun around to face him, still moving her feet to the beat as she looked at him.

"I don't know," she said, her voice carrying over the music. "I didn't have a date; your date is busy dancing with someone else…" She placed her arms on his shoulders and swayed her hips to the beat of the song. "And prom's for dancing, isn't it?" She giggled and grabbed his hands, practically forcing him to dance with her.

Finn smiled and managed to spin her around, only causing her to laugh even more.

"Don't you have prom committee stuff to do?"

She shook her head and leaned in to speak to him. "I think I can spare you one song." She winked at him and continued to dance in front of him, joining the rest of the crowd as they started to jump up and down to the song being played.

The music eventually changed and Rachel grabbed Finn by the hands, squeezing them for a moment.

"I've got to go," she said, Finn looking down at her with a smile. She was slightly taller than him for once because of the heels that she wore, but still not by much. "I'll see you later, alright? I've got to go count the votes for prom king and queen."

Finn looked at her with a smile and walked her off of the dance floor slightly, smiling as he looked at her.

Without thinking, he pulled her in for an embrace, squeezing her tightly. His fingers pressed into the bare skin of her back and he felt her try to resist him at first; eventually melting into him and hugging him back.

"I'll see you," he said, backing away from her awkwardly after realizing what had happened. Finn began to rub the back of his neck nervously and looked at her as she looked down at her feet.

"Yeah," she said, beginning to leave. "I'll see you too."

:.:.:

He really wasn't expecting it when it happened.

Granted, he should have been expecting it. Quinn was a perpetual liar and he should have known not to trust her in a million years.

Rachel wasn't expecting anything, obviously. He had been watching her from behind on the stage and she looked so happy when she walked up and got to stop the music, holding the envelope in her hands that had the answers that everyone had been waiting to hear all night.

Of course, Quinn had managed to ruin that before she even got the chance to say anything.

Finn hadn't been expecting the two to actually go on with their plan that Quinn had announced to him at the tie shop, but they had. Quinn and Santana had rigged up a bucket of fruit punch to spill all over Rachel when she opened up the letter for prom king and queen in front of the entire school. It ruined her dress and her hair and caused everyone to start laughing at her before she even got the chance to process what had happened to her.

Amidst the laughter she had managed to make her way off of the stage and through the back doors of the gym, Finn quickly springing off of the stage after her.

"Finn," Quinn hissed, eyes wide. "What are you doing?"

"Cleaning up your mess," he said, pushing his way through the crowd to make it out the same doors Rachel had pushed open on her way out of the gym.

It wasn't hard to tell where she had been; Finn following the trail of fruit punch that he was expecting her dress had left behind as she made her way down the hall.

He found her, eventually. Rachel was on the ground in the main hallway of the school's first floor, hugging her knees and crying as she hid her face in her lap.

"Rachel," was all he could say, kneeling down next to her. She started to cough through her sobs and looked up to see who was next to her, her now-stringy hair falling in her eyes.

"What?" She asked, her voice bitter and weighed down with tears. Finn placed a hand on her back and looked at her stained dress, watching her as she continued to break down in front of him. "Finn, I don't want to talk right now-"

"Rachel, I'm so sorry," he continued, moving his hand after realizing how sticky her skin was. "I should have done something, and I didn't think they would actually go through with any of it-"

"You knew about this?" She looked up at him, her mascara painting black roadmaps down her eyes.

He realized how bad it sounded after he said it.

"No, Rachel, I don't mean it like that, I just-"

"You mean you knew that they were going to do this to me? Who are they?" She sniffled and wiped her nose as she looked at him.

Finn felt his heart sink to the bottom of his stomach. "Santana and Quinn."

"Of course," she said, rolling her eyes and leaning her head back against the wall. "Of course, your girlfriend is the one who wants to make me look like a laughing stalk in front of the entire school." Rachel sniffled again and stood up from her position on the ground, now towering over Finn.

It was funny how things worked out.

"Rachel, it's not like that-"

"No, of course it's not like that," she started, pacing in front of him. "It's not like you've spent the last two years standing by and watching while she's made every second of everyday a living hell for me."

Finn didn't say anything and looked down at his feet, still crouching down on the floor down by the red stain Rachel had left on the floor.

"All you've ever done is pretended like nothing's been wrong in your perfect little world, with your perfect little girlfriend," she spat at him, tears running down her face. "You let her step all over me and you must care to some extent, because you care about me, but you clearly don't care enough to do anything about it."

"Look, I get it, alright?" Finn said, raising his voice as she finished. "I've been an asshole, Rachel. I get it."

"No, you don't," she said, wiping her tears from her eyes. Finn tipped his head up to look at her, but it was too hard. She looked rather pathetic with her punch-soaked hair and stained dress and smudged eye makeup. "You're a coward, an-and a liar, and you don't care about anything besides what other people think of you," she told him, swallowing a sob. "Whatever Quinn did to me, you ignored it like it was normal, and then you would go and be nice to me whenever she wasn't around, and I just…" She closed her eyes and sighed. "You confused me."

She looked him square in the eye and sighed, doing everything in her power not to start crying in front of him.

"All you've ever done is pretended like nothing's ever been wrong in your perfect little world and avoided the pain going on around you."

Finn stood up and looked at her, watching as she turned her back to him.

"Rachel, I promise, I'm sor-"

"No," she said, laughing bitterly. "I'm done." She turned around to face him, starting to shiver. "I'm done with you, and I'm done trying to be friends with you, and I'm done trying to be involved in anything you do," she said, wiping her tears from her eyes.

"I hope you and Quinn live happily ever after, Finn. I really do."

"Rachel, wait-"

But it was too late. Rachel had already started making her way around the corner of the hall, Finn deciding not to follow after her.

There wasn't a point to it, really. Rachel had made up her mind and seemed like she was sticking to it.

Finn, however, knew he had many more important decisions to make.


	11. Chapter 11: Now

She hasn't had a hangover this bad since college.

Rachel didn't even get that bad of hangovers in college – mainly because she didn't go out and drink with everyone that wanted her to. Rachel's college existence was one highlighted with staying up at all hours of the night studying, going out late at night to go study, and avoiding parties at all costs just to study.

It wasn't like it was difficult for her to do, anyway. Rachel wasn't invited to many parties in college.

She sits up in her bed and feels the room start to spin around her, her head feeling like it's about to split in two. She can't remember the night before for the life of her, and it scares her. Rachel's not the type to go out at night and not be able to remember how she's gotten back into her bed. She's always thought that she'd never be the one to be so hung over that she couldn't remember anything. She saves that for Kurt, or the girls in high school that she hated growing up.

This is an entirely new situation for her.

It doesn't take Rachel long to realize that she's still in her dress from the night before, her hair sticking to the sides of her face and back.

Whatever she's done must have been one for the history books.

Rachel manages to slip out of her bed and treads to her dresser, carefully untwisting the hair wrapped around her earrings she had been wearing last night before taking them out. She sets them on her dresser and sighs, feeling like her head is about to explode. She's never known hangovers to be _this _bad – well, based off of all of the stories people have told her about hangovers before.

She tries her best to backtrack and think about what must have happened the night before, unable to come up any solution that seems to make sense in her mind. She's not one to be spontaneous and wild and do things on a whim. She's straight-laced Rachel Berry, who lives alone with her cat and not much a life to speak for.

She looks down at her dress and starts to think about the night before. Wine and dinner and singing loudly in the car and Finn.

Shit. She had gone out with Finn last night, hadn't she?

Rachel opens up a dresser drawer and pulls out an old shirt and a pair of shorts before deciding to walk out and greet Finn for the morning. She's not about to let him see her like this. She probably looks like a five-cent whore who's just woken up from whatever one night stand she's just gotten over with. No matter where she stands with Finn, she's not going to let him see her like this.

Maybe he already knows, though. If she were really that drunk the night before, maybe she's acted on certain feelings that she has for him that she doesn't want him to know about. Rachel's been told already by Kurt that when she gets drunk, she turns into someone else entirely.

It's no secret by now that Rachel's grown to like Finn. She's tried her best to put aside all of things that had happened between them in high school and she now feels some kind of emotion towards him that she can't describe – mainly because she's never felt it quite at this level of admiration before. She's started to like the little things about him that make him tick – the constellation of freckles scattered over the bridge of his nose, the way he laughs at her when she makes a stupid joke that she doesn't even think is funny, how he tells her that she looks nice when she pulls her hair back in a ponytail. Tiny, little unimportant things that she knows mean absolutely nothing to him but slowly amount to mean the world to her.

She has to promise herself, however, that no matter what the circumstance, she will not fall for Finn Hudson.

It's one more thing for her to worry about and one more thing for her to dedicate her emotions to. Rachel lives an ordinary life that she had always promised herself she would never live, but it's just the way her cards have been dealt to her. She doesn't need to bring her life to a brand new level of complication just because she has a small crush on Finn.

Besides, he was more responsible for helping make her life complete hell when they were in high school. He doesn't deserve her heart in the first place.

By the time Rachel finishes getting dressed and tosses her dress she had worn the night before in her laundry hamper, she sneakily makes her way across the narrow hallway of her apartment to her bathroom, looking at her reflection in the mirror. She runs her fingers through her hair and does a quick job of wiping the leftover makeup from underneath her eyes off of her face, trying to muster up a smile as she stares at herself once more.

Her smile, however, is interrupted by the clatter of a pan hitting her kitchen floor, causing Rachel to jump frantically.

At first she thinks that it's Berkley; running around her kitchen and jumping from one side of the countertop to another. He's been known to knock things off before, but the sound of the pan hitting the floor is loud enough for her to want to tear her hair out.

_Right, _she thinks to herself through her migraine. _Everything loud is always louder when you have a hangover. Brilliant, Rachel. You get a hangover and you have a cat that knocks almost everything you own to the floor._

Rachel shuts her eyes and pads down the hallway into kitchen, expecting to find Berkley waiting there in front of her on the floor, his tail waving back and forth behind him with what looks like a satisfied grin on his face (he's a cat).

Much to her dismay, she finds Finn instead.

"Sorry about that," he says, smiling at her cheekily. He scrambles down to the floor to pick up the pan he's dropped on the floor. Rachel tries to smile but clutches her head instead, feeling the immediate need to sit down the moment she watches him run in front of her.

"Oh, shit," he exclaims, a shocked expression covering his face. Rachel pushes her hair from her eyes and Finn walks over to the refrigerator, ignoring whatever he's cooking on the stove at the moment. Rachel watches him as he opens the door and looks like he's pulling a glass out from the side door.

He starts to stir it with a spoon from her utensil drawer and the clinking sound it makes as it taps against the side of the glass makes her feel like the world is going to implode. `

"This is for you," Finn tells her, handing her the glass. Rachel manages to intercept it despite her feeling of the room spinning. "I figured you were going to wake up with a hangover today, so, um, I made this for you." Rachel looks down at the short glass that he hands to her, the smell overwhelming her and making her feel nauseous.

"What is it?"

"I went through your cabinet and found some gin. I hope you don't mind." Rachel shakes her head and pinches her eyes shut, feeling the room spin around her. "It's a hangover remedy. Just don't ask what's in it."

She opens her eyes again to look at him, knowing that she probably looks like a mess in his eyes. Her eyes flick down to the glass that Finn's handed her, staring into the pale orange mixture. She pinches her nose and lifts the glass up to her lips, downing it quickly followed by a cough.

"That's horrible," she tells him, the taste still lingering on her tongue. Finn looks at her and laughs before returning to his post at her stove, smoke coming off of whatever's cooking in the pan he's using. "What the hell was in that?"

"If I told you, you would kill me," he says, stirring at whatever is he's cooking. Rachel shakes her head slightly and makes her way over to him at the stove, staring down into the pan of food he's got going. It looks like eggs and peppers and onions and much to her surprise, it actually looks good.

"You're cooking," she says, like it's something huge that needs to be acknowledged. "You never cook. At least you never cook well, anyway."

Finn laughs at her comment and she laughs back. He's the only one who's managed to get any kind of real smile out of her since she's woken up.

"Yeah, well I figured that I would try today," he tells her, Rachel beginning to lean against the stove. "I mean, you probably won't want to eat it just because of your hangover and everything, but I figured that I would try my hand at… something."

Rachel smiles and looks at him, her headache still persisting and not bothering to subside.

"Well, you're doing a good job," she tells him. "If I didn't feel like I was going to… _vomit_all over the place, I would have some."

The two laugh and Rachel feels Finn's eyes trained on her as she looks up at him, her smile unable to leave her face. She doesn't know why he makes her feel this way, but he does. For the first time, Rachel's unable to find the right words to say to him and she's stuck blushing and giggling when he sees her.

She's never felt this way about anyone else in her entire life –and that fact that the feelings are for Finn is what scares her.

"Shit, Rachel, you… you really look sick," he tells her, even though she's smiling and looks like she's having the best time one could possibly have while hung over talking to him. She continues to look at him and nods slightly, setting the glass he had given her moments earlier on the counter behind her.

"Why don't you sit down on the couch or something," he tells her, beginning to escort her out of the kitchen and into the living room. "Go to sleep and I'll bring you some water when you wake up."

Rachel traipses into the living room and rubs her eyes, finding herself on the futon that Finn's pulled out for himself and turned into a bed. The smell of his cologne and shampoo that she would normally enjoy envelopes her and the overwhelming blast of Axe body spray makes her feel like she's about to be sick – all because of her hangover, of course.

"There," Finn says, pulling the comforter up around her and tucking her in – to the best of his ability, anyway. Rachel's sure that he doesn't have much experience with tucking people into beds or anything. "Hopefully you'll wake up and feel better."

She turns her head and looks at Finn through heavy-lidded eyes as he walks back into the kitchen.

"You're a good man, Finn Hudson," she says, her voice scratching against her throat.

He looks back at her on his way into the kitchen and she smiles, shutting her eyes and drifting off to sleep.

Despite her hangover, she still has the same feelings for him. She just doesn't know how to tell him – or whether or not to tell him.

:.:.:

She's woken up by her phone buzzing on the table behind the couch. Her hangover's subsided somewhat, but she still has her headache; not bothering to leave and overstaying its welcome by now. It's in her purse from the night before, which she deftly unzips and fishes her phone out of.

24 messages and 16 missed calls from Kurt. Of course.

It starts to come back to her slowly; the trip to the ice cream parlor and Finn taking her out and buying her a bowl of ice cream. She can remember running into Kurt and saying something that surprised him to some capacity, which is what she can only assume that all of the phone calls and text messages are about.

She can't find Finn anywhere, so she thinks that he's left for the day or something. If she remembers correctly, he had said something about a doctor's appointment or something today (which she thinks is kind of odd for a Sunday), but it's fine. Finn's allowed to take her car out if it's for doctor's visits or whatever. Rachel's grown not to mind as much anymore.

She presses a button and dials Kurt's phone, turning the volume down as she presses her phone to her ear.

"Rachel, I've been trying to get a hold of you all day-"

"I have a hangover, Kurt," she tells him, her words biting despite her head making her feel like the room is spinning. "I've been asleep all day long."

"Not with Finn, I hope-"

"What?" She's confused and doesn't understand what he's talking about. "Kurt, Finn and I… we aren't anything-"

"Rachel, I ran into you at Baskin-Robbins the other night with him. You two looked like you were more than friendly with each other."

Her mouth hangs open slightly and she sits up on her couch, upset. "Kurt, Finn and I have never even thought about doing anything… _together." _Liar. "He's living with me until he can get back up on his feet again. That's all." She sighs and pushes a hand through her now matted hair. "You know how I feel about Finn, Kurt."

"Yeah, that really showed when you two were getting ice cream together."

She sighs and gets up off of the couch, realizing that her headache has subsided somewhat as she stands. "Kurt, you need to believe me when I say that nothing is going on between Finn and I. It just… wouldn't work out." Her phone beeps and she pulls it away from her ear to see what it says.

One incoming call from Finn.

"Kurt, look, let me put you on hold," she says, placing the phone back against her ear. "I need to take this." She decides not to tell him that it's Finn on the other line. Doing that would just open up a brand new can of worms that she doesn't want to be responsible for.

She switches over to the other line and sighs before saying anything. "Hello?"

"Hey, Rachel," Finn says on the other end of the phone call. "Um, are you feeling better?"

"Yeah," she says, sitting back down on the edge of the couch. "I… I really needed that nap, I guess." He doesn't sound the same over the phone. Ever since living with her, Finn's sounded like he's able to find the light in every situation. Now, he just sounds like he's worn down and tired and the cadence of his words sounds secretive, like he's keeping something from her.

No matter where they stand with their relationship with one another, Rachel would like to think that Finn wouldn't feel the need to keep a secret from her. Despite their shaky past, she doesn't feel as though there's anything to hide from the other now. It's like they've started fresh and she doesn't have to worry about whatever happened between them ten years ago.

"Hey, Rachel, um, I need you to come down to the hospital," he tells her, his voice quiet. Rachel can hear the noise of a doctor's office in the background, slowly becoming more concerned for Finn the longer he stays on the phone with her. "Um, I just…" His voice breaks off on something that sounds like a sob to Rachel's ears. "There's some stuff we need to go over. Together."

She raises an eyebrow and wraps her free arm around her waist, squeezing herself tightly. "Finn, I thought you were at the doctor's office," she tells him, worry laced in her voice. "To check in on your leg, or whatever." Lately, since Finn's visits have been occurring more frequently, Rachel's been under the impression that his leg isn't getting better any time soon – and that there's something more to his doctor's appointments than just his injury.

"I am," he tells her, voice shaking. "I just need you here, Rachel. Please."

At first, she doesn't like the tone in his voice. This worried, nervous, shaky tone that makes her think that he's just lying to her or something. It's like PTSD, really. For all she knows, Quinn's involved with this whole thing and is planning some kind of reboot of whatever it was that she had planned in high school.

Rachel nods as Finn speaks as if he can see her, and then realizes that she's being stupid.

"Of course, Finn," she says, swallowing thickly. "Whatever you need."

She hangs up on him and switches back over to her other line, where Kurt's been waiting impatiently for the past five minutes.

"Rachel, are you-"

"Kurt, I need to ask you a favor," she says, not bothering to wait and listen to whatever it is he wants to complain about. "I need to borrow your car."

:.:.:

She's never really spent a lot of time at a hospital before. There was one time when one of her cousins had a baby and she had come in with a bouquet of flowers to celebrate, but there really wasn't anything she did in the hospital while she was there.

The maternity ward was a nice place to be, anyway. It was filled with crying babies and glowing new mothers and the hope that there was something much, much more than the hospital walls.

Where Rachel is, however, seems like a much worse place to be.

Kurt had let her borrow his car after explaining that she needed to go down to the hospital to see Finn about something, but didn't explain much after that. She knows that Kurt thinks that something's going on between them, and she knows that she's not going to say anything to him. The way she sees things, he doesn't need to be dragged down into the entire mess that she and Finn have created together. He wouldn't understand, anyway.

She runs up to the front desk when she gets there and asks where Finn is, to which a nurse simply gets up from behind the desk and begins walking her through a labyrinth of hallways until she arrives outside of the door to the room that's supposed to be containing Finn.

The nurse turns to look at her with a grim expression on her face. "You're… Rachel, right?"

Rachel smiles sheepishly and nods. "Yes," she says, her voice soft.

The nurse looks at her and smiles sympathetically. "Well, good luck," she says, opening the door for her before walking away. Rachel raises an eyebrow and looks at the nurse as she walks away, opening the door wider and walking into the room that Finn's sitting in.

He turns to look at her and smiles softly, causing Rachel to walk into the room further and stand by his side as he sits in the chair in front of the desk that waits at the head of the room. She's surprised that the room looks more like an office than an actual doctor's office.

"Hey," he says, pulling the chair that's next to him out for Rachel to sit in. Rachel walks up to him, still confused.

"Finn, I don't-"

"Rachel, just sit down," he tells her, his face pale. She does as she's told and looks at Finn suspiciously. She doesn't understand why he's acting like this. Surely, nothing's wrong with him. Maybe it's just the doctor telling him that he needs to go back to resting his leg or that he's officially been given the all clear and this is going to be the last of his visits to the hospital, or the doctor's office, or wherever it is that they are.

She pushes her hair from her face and looks at Finn, confused. "Finn, I don't understand what's going on. Where's the doctor?"

Finn looks at her and she doesn't pay attention to him as he tries to speak to her. "He's gone, but Rachel, I need to tell you something."

"I just don't understand why you brought me out to the hospital to tell me-"

"I haven't been honest with you – about anything, and I just think that it's time you finally knew about what's been happening with me-"

"I mean, I had to borrow Kurt's car, Finn. He's not even quite sure as to where I am, and I don't want to worry him-"

"I have cancer, Rachel."

Rachel looks at Finn and feels her heart sink to the pit of her stomach. The words that spill out of Finn's mouth make her believe that he's lying to her or something, just so he can get her attention.

"Finn," she starts off, looking at him incredulously. "Don't joke around like that."

"I'm not joking," he tells her, hanging his head down with his eyes trained on his lap. "Lymphoma, actually. I never really hurt my leg at all."

Rachel looks at him and her jaw drops, feeling her stomach twist itself into a knot. Her entire body turns numb and she feels her hands begin to shake, unsure as to what she should do with herself.

"This isn't true," she says, shaking her head as she continues to look at him. "Finn, you've seemed so normal and healthy and fine these past few days, and you haven't been on the couch for too long or anything, and you've just seemed so… _happy _lately, that I just thought…" Her voice starts to trail off, tears beginning to spring to her eyes and run down her cheeks. She breathes heavily; unable to find the words to say what she wants to say to him.

"Rachel, I'm sorry," he tells her, leaning over in his chair so that he's closer to her. "I know that I should have told you sooner, but I could never find the right time," he tells her, Rachel unable to look up at him once she's started crying. She doesn't even know why she's crying at this point. She doesn't understand why he's telling her what he's telling her, and why he feels that right now is the opportune time to let her know.

She takes in a deep breath and turns her head to look at him, tears running down her cheeks. "I don't understand," she manages to get out between sobs. "This entire time you've just been… lying to me?"

Finn shakes his head and looks distraught for a moment, getting up out of his chair and walking towards Rachel. "Well, yeah, but I… when you put it like that it just makes me sound like an asshole," he tells her, falling down to his knees and looking up at her. "I didn't want to say anything because I was afraid of how you would react," he tells her. He takes her hand and squeezes it gently, causing her to look down at him.

"So you're sick," she says, unsure as to what she should say about the matter. "And you've been coming to the hospital to get better?"

"Yeah," he says, looking up at her again. "The doctors said that they're going to start me on chemo soon, so we'll see. Hopefully it'll all get better from here on out."

Rachel looks down at him and sighs, flipping her hair over her shoulder and trying to compose herself. "I just… I wish you had told me sooner," she says, looking away from him for a moment. "I always thought that you just had insanely high doctor bills, and were tired just because that was the way you were, and…" Her voice trails off and she starts to laugh bitterly. "I would have tried to help you, or something."

Finn looks up at her with a smile and rubs a thumb over her hand. "Well, we can work on it together," he tells her. "I promise, I'll tell you about everything."

She looks at him and nods, eyes shifting to look at their intertwined hands for a moment. "Okay," she whispers, feeling Finn stand next to her as she does the same. He wraps his arms around her in a tight embrace and she sighs, burying her face in his shoulder.

She wants to cry and have him told her and tell her that everything's going to be alright, but she knows that isn't an option between the two of them. At least not yet, anyway.

She pulls away from him for a moment and presses a kiss to him cheek, causing him to pull away from her even faster. Her lips feel like they're on fire, and he looks at her like he's confused with what she's done.

"Well," she says, rubbing her hands on her skirt nervously. "We should go then, shouldn't we?" She turns around and begins to walk to the door, rubbing her nose and sniffling slightly.

She can feel Finn wait to trail behind her, her heart pounding in her ears.

She can make it through helping him just as long as she doesn't lose her way herself first, she thinks.


	12. Chapter 12: Then

Finn spent the rest of his junior year without Rachel. She had detached herself from his life – and with good reason, of course. He and Quinn ended up breaking up after she had staged that horrible event at prom with Santana, but he still felt as though he owed something to Rachel – anything, really. Finn was sure there was nothing he wouldn't do to make sure that Rachel felt better about herself again.

The Monday after prom, when they got back to school, Rachel asked for a change in her seating arrangement in their chemistry class. Something about how she wasn't able to see any more from the back of the classroom and moving to the front would help improve her grade – even though she had an A in that class already.

Finn knew why she wanted to move, and frankly, he was expecting it. The little lecture that she had given him in the hallway at prom stuck to him more than ever, even though he knew that he would never be able to put it to good use.

He would see her walking in the hallway from time to time, but he tried not to pay too much attention to her. Rachel wouldn't even bother to wave at him like she normally would, but that was fine. He wasn't expecting her to magically forgive him all of a sudden, or anything.

They wrapped up their junior year at a stalemate. On one of their last days of school, which most teacher spent allowing students to sign yearbooks, he thought that he would take the chance to ask her if he could sign hers.

"Sure," she said, twisting one of her pigtails around her finger nervously. She set the yearbook she pressed to her chest down on the table in front of him, letting her eyes linger on the cover. Finn pulled the Sharpie he had been using all day from the pocket of his shorts and opened up the cover of Rachel's yearbook, admiring all of the signatures she had received already.

Apparently, whether people liked you or not, you were infamous throughout the entire student body if you were publically humiliated in front of the entire school at prom.

He flipped through the pages, planning to sign his name with some kind of message by his school picture, but he stopped at a snapshot he noticed of the two of them together, surprising him.

She looked at him and sighed, leaning against the table the two of them stood in front of.

"I guess I can sign yours, if you want."

Finn's lips curled up into a small smile and he handed her his own yearbook that had already been littered with signatures. He watched her as she opened it and pulled out a pink Sharpie from her pencil pouch and started to look for a space for her to sign her name. She shut the cover to the book faster than Finn could finish writing what he was in her own yearbook and pushed it towards him on the table.

Finn capped his own marker and looked at Rachel for a moment, sighing. "So, um, do you have any plans for the summer?"

"I'm in the Lima Community Theatre's production of _Les Misérables_"_, _she told him, brushing her bangs from her eyes. "I'm playing Éponine."

He wished that he knew who that was so he could understand what she was talking about – but he didn't, so it didn't really matter.

It didn't surprise him that she didn't encourage him to see her show like he normally did. Rachel probably wanted nothing to do with him at that point.

And, quite frankly, he didn't blame her.

:.:.:

"She's just really cool," he said, rubbing his towel through his hair. Finn looked at his reflection and sneered slightly, rolling his eyes. He didn't want to make his emotions so clearly shown, but it was hard not to. After all, someone was just standing there, going on about how much they loved Rachel Berry.

It would have been perfectly fine if was the one doing it.

"Good luck with that," Puck said, rolling his eyes and pulling his shirt down over his head. It was the end of a football practice and all of them were in the locker room, getting dressed again. "She wears a chastity belt and probably swallowed the key," he continued.

Finn didn't want to say anything regarding the matter. His relationship with Rachel didn't exist anymore. He hadn't gone to see her in her show that summer (even though he had heard she did a fabulous job), and he never talked to her when he saw her working at the music store. It was almost as if Rachel had fallen off the face of the Earth – _his_ Earth, anyway.

The one who was talking about Rachel was Sam Evans – a new student who had moved to Ohio from out of state. He had joined the football team and had taken Finn's position as quarterback, which Finn didn't end up minding much.

It was the fact that he wanted Rachel that drove him up a wall.

"She's just really nice and kind of hot," he said, pulling a shirt over his head and closing his locker. "I think I'm going to ask her to the homecoming dance once school starts up again."

Puck burst out laughing and so did a few others, causing Finn to look away from them momentarily. Puck walked up to Sam and slapped him on the back, snickering to himself.

"Good luck getting her to go anywhere," Puck said, laughing. "You obviously haven't heard about what happened to her at prom last year." Sam looked at him, confused. "Finn, tell him. You're probably the one that knows the most about it."

Finn felt his stomach twist into a knot and his forehead break out in a sweat. He didn't want to think about what had happened to her at their junior prom.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Come on, man."

"Finn's ex-girlfriend dumped a bunch of punch on her or something," Puck continued, laughing. "Embarrassed the hell out of her."

He felt his face turn red and Finn turned away from the group of them, not really interested in what they had to say on the matter. He knew that Puck was insensitive to all of it and that Sam would probably just listen to whatever it was Puck had to say, so he didn't want to bother.

Besides, listening to more about Rachel and whatever Sam felt about her would only make him feel queasier than he already was.

:.:.:

Sam started dating Rachel by the end of September. He asked her to the homecoming dance and while she said no initially, she went on a dinner date with him instead. Finn heard about everything through Puck, who Sam had been telling everything about Rachel to.

Finn and Sam never really became close friends, but Sam and Puck had – thus explaining why Sam told Puck everything about his progressing relationship with Rachel.

Every once and a while, Puck would start to tell Finn about what Sam and Rachel would do together, but Finn didn't want to hear it. Not because he was jealous, but simply because he wasn't interested in hearing about it.

"You know, she gave him a hand job the other day," he said one day when he was over at Finn's playing Call of Duty in his bedroom and avoiding their homework together. "I never would have thought that she would move so fast with someone." He laughed and Finn rolled his eyes, trying to pay more attention to the game than what Puck was saying.

"Yeah, right," he said, not believing what Puck was saying. Rachel wasn't like that as far as he knew. Besides, even though Finn didn't know Sam very well, he was sure that he wasn't the type to pressure Rachel into doing anything she didn't want to. He wasn't Puck, after all.

Puck shrugged and returned to the game. "I don't know, man," he said, laughing to himself. "Maybe you're just jealous that you're not getting any." Puck had arranged some kind of relationship with Santana once more – they weren't dating, since Santana had expressed her feelings towards women instead of men, but they still slept with each other from time to time.

The last time Finn had done anything with anyone was with Quinn before prom night. She had moved on since then; deciding that she was going to be a 'free, liberated woman' until going to college where she would find whomever it was that she was going to marry and live happily ever after with – someone she had made clear wasn't going to be Finn.

"I'm not jealous," he said, trying to focus on the game rather than whatever it was Puck was talking about. Puck just laughed and looked back at the television screen with a shrug.

Finn didn't care, anyway. He _wasn't_ jealous, after all.

:.:.:

By the time fall started turning into winter, the seniors were encouraged to share their plans for college and applying with the faculty so that they could be 'prepared for their future.' Finn, however, knew that he wanted to go to school wherever he was able to get a football scholarship to. He wasn't particularly sure as to what he would go to school for or if he would even end up graduating with a degree, but he knew that he wanted to go to college so that he would be able to play football.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem like it was going to be the case with Finn Hudson.

He had been scheduled to see the guidance counselor after she had realized that he hadn't really applied for any schools yet by mid-January. It was sad, really – he thought there was nothing he could really do about it. Everyone else he knew already had plans for their futures. They were either going to college or finding jobs after graduating so they could save up enough money to move out to wherever it was they wanted to move out to.

Finn didn't really have clue as to what to do when it came to his future. By the time January had happened, he hadn't really been offered any football scholarships like he had expected. It was a sore spot with his mother, and he certainly didn't want to talk about it with his guidance counselor.

Because of it, however, Finn had to stay after school one afternoon to have a conversation with Miss Pillsbury, the guidance counselor. He wasn't looking forward to it, but as far as he was concerned, it was better than taking the risk of walking to the student lot after school for his car and catching Rachel walking to Sam's car with him.

He ended up making his way to the guidance office after school one day and found a chair to sit down in as he waited; realizing the door was shut when he arrived. It usually meant that someone else was in there talking to the counselor, which frightened him a little. Normally, people went to the guidance counselor to talk about their personal lives, which usually resulted in crying or some kind of big, emotional scene as they made their way out of the room. Finn wasn't in the mood to be the witness to anything like that.

Watching people cry always made him uncomfortable, anyway. The only people he had ever seen cry were his mom, Quinn, and Rachel. And even when he had seen Quinn cry, it wasn't like she was _actually _crying over something like Rachel had been. Quinn cried over movies and other things that weren't directly related to her.

When he had seen Rachel cry, it was because she was upset and scared and experiencing all of the other emotions one could that could make you cry.

So there he sat, waiting in the guidance counselor's office and wondering when whoever it was that was currently visiting with Miss Pillsbury would come out.

He only kept himself occupied for a few moments with the pamphlets out on the table between the waiting room chairs before turning his head back to the door of Miss Pillsbury's office when he heard it open.

There was Rachel, walking out of the room with her head hung down; busy studying a handful of pamphlets in her hands.

Finn didn't want to say anything to her initially, just because he knew that saying anything to her would make her sad or upset or any of the other kinds of emotions she had been displaying towards him ever since the end of their junior year – none of which he particularly liked.

"Oh, Finn," Miss Pillsbury said with a smile as she noticed him, smoothing her hands off on her skirt as she made the exchange between Rachel and Finn. "So glad to see you. I was thinking about you earlier today, actually."

Finn cracked a small smile and stood up from his chair, hoping that Rachel hadn't noticed him by the time Miss Pillsbury had said anything, but he was wrong. By the time he tipped his head back up, there was Rachel, looking up at him with a shocked expression on her face, like he was some kind of long-lost friend she hadn't seen in twenty years.

"H-hi, Finn," she stammered, offering him a small wave. Finn just gave her a stupid smile in return and watched as she looked up at him, still smiling slightly.

"Hey," he said, waving at her with a small smile. Out of all of the possible people, he never would have expected someone like Rachel to come out of the counselor's office. She seemed more like the type that would end up helping the guidance counselor with the more stubborn students or sharpen pencils and keep Miss Pillsbury up to date with her schedule during her free period.

Finn never would have assumed Rachel would have needed guidance from anyone in her life, ever. She seemed to be able to navigate her life on her own pretty well.

Obviously, that wasn't the case.

"Have you decided where you're going to school yet?" She asked, her voice breaking the brief silence between them that seemed to go on forever. Finn cleared his throat and looked around for a moment, hoping Miss Pillsbury was somewhere nearby so he could escape to her office with her. Talking with Rachel about whatever it was she wanted to talk about didn't seem like a very good time to him.

(Rather, it _did, _he was just afraid to actually face her and have a conversation with her.)

"Um…" He started, his voice trailing off. "I mean, not really. I have a few kinks I need to iron out and stuff, but other than that, everything should be fine."

She nodded and looked up at him with a sweet smile, but not the same as he had been used to. "That's great," she told him, swaying back and forth on her heels slightly. Her hands gripped the pamphlets in she had tighter, only causing Finn to question what they were about and why she seemed so apprehensive to look at them.

"Yeah," she said, mumbling slightly. "Me too. I mean, I know _where _I want to go, I've just been thinking about what I actually want to do with my life lately," she said, her voice sounding like she wasn't as sure of herself as she was trying to come off.

Finn laughed slightly and smiled at her. "You're not going to move out to New York and be some big Broadway star?" He smiled as he watched her focus her attention down to the pamphlets in her hands. "What ever happened to leaving everyone behind and taking Broadway by storm?"

"Some things don't always work out the way we want them to," she said, interrupting him curtly. Finn looked down at her with an arched eyebrow and watched as her expression melted back into one of regret and sadness instead of the hard one she had been wearing moments ago. "I – I mean, I just… I've been looking at another career path lately, that's all."

He wanted to pull her aside and actually talk to her about everything, but before he could even form a coherent sentence in his brain, Rachel was making her way towards the door out into the hallway, where Finn could see Sam waiting for her against a row of lockers in the hallway. As far as he was concerned, Rachel always wanted to be some big Broadway star that was going to go to school out in New York and kiss Ohio goodbye the moment she hopped on her plane after graduation.

Apparently, her plans had changed.

Out of nowhere, it seemed, Miss Pillsbury appeared from her office and Rachel turned over her shoulder to look at Finn again, offering him a small wave.

"See you around, Finn," she said, her voice carrying through the room.

Finn turned around to look at her and watched through the glass as she walked up to Sam and fell into his arms as they wrapped around her waist, causing her to stand up on her toes to kiss him.

"Finn," Miss Pillsbury said, smiling brightly. "Why don't we go inside my office and talk about your plans for the future?"

:.:.:

Finn ended up befriending Sam by the time prom season came around again. They never turned into the best of friends, but he didn't hate him or anything. They got along well and when Puck suggested they all go to someone's house to play Call of Duty, it wasn't like Finn was ready to tear his hair out when Puck suggested Sam come along.

Actually, if he hadn't been dating Rachel, Finn probably wouldn't have had such a problem with him.

Jealousy was the right word to describe it, but Finn didn't want to slap that label on anything just yet. He knew that he was never going to get the chance to date Rachel. That ship had sailed along with Quinn and prom night their junior year.

He still knew, however, that he wanted the best for her. No matter who she was dating, Finn knew that he would never find them to be substantial enough for someone like her. She was one of those girls that no matter who she ended up with, she would always be able to do better.

Of course, if he had said anything like that to Puck or Sam, he would have sounded like he was crazy.

"You're not going to prom with anyone this year, are you?" Puck asked Finn one night when Sam was over playing Call of Duty. Sam had gone upstairs to grab another bag of potato chips and Finn was enjoying the time spent without him. He knew that if he had been downstairs when Puck ad asked his question about prom, he would have gone on about how he was going to ask Rachel and how excited he was to take her to prom.

"Um, no," he said, trying to focus more on the paused screen of the video game than what Puck was talking about. "Prom's stupid, anyway."

Puck started to laugh and opened up another can of beer. "Please," he said through a laugh. "You're just upset because you know that Quinn's not going to go with you or whatever."

"That's not true," Finn said, rolling his eyes. It really wasn't, actually. He didn't really know what his exact reasoning was behind not wanting to go to prom. He didn't want to go alone, that was for sure, and he didn't want to try and scrape together a date so he could go with Sam and Rachel. "I just… I don't know, there's no one I want to go with, and I don't really know who I would end up going with, and-"

"You can just go with Sam," Puck said, reclining back on the couch he had been sitting against. "I mean, he's gonna ask Rachel and you'll just end up being a huge cockblock when they go back to whatever hotel it is that he's going to get a room at, but other than that, you should be fine."

Finn looked at Puck incredulously, setting his controller down. "Wait, what?" He adjusted himself as he sat and looked up at Puck, trying not to look so surprised.

"Yeah," Puck said, acting like it wasn't a big deal – or at least not as big of a deal as Finn was making it be. "I mean, I don't normally talk about all of that relationship shit with anyone or anything, but he was all worried about asking her or whatever, because of last year, and-"

"So they're going to prom together?" Finn asked, even though he already knew the answer. It was like he needed the news to actually sink in before he started believing it.

Puck looked at Finn like he was crazy. "Uh, yeah," he said. "I don't know how I can make it any clearer." Finn could hear Sam making his way back downstairs and picked up his controller once more and adjusted himself against the couch with the effort to look the same as he had before he had gone upstairs.

"Hey," he said upon arriving downstairs and throwing the bag of chips between Puck and Finn on the floor. "I didn't miss anything, did I?"

"We were just talk about prom," Puck said, picking up his controller again as Sam sat down. "Finn was wondering if you were going to take Rachel."

"Yeah," Sam said, smiling slightly. "That reminds me, I need to call the hotel tomorrow night and make our reservations."

Finn did everything in his power to avoid what Sam had said.

He knew that if he really wanted to, he could go with someone like Santana (only because Puck was going to be out of town over prom weekend), or he just didn't have to go at all. The only thing Finn seemed to want out of prom was for Rachel to actually enjoy herself. He felt responsible for what had happened to her the last time and wanted to make sure that her senior prom was one that she actually would have enjoyed.

And had he been the one taking her, he would have made sure that every last detail of her senior prom night would have been perfect.

He wasn't, however. She was dating Sam and seemed to be pretty in love with him.

"Sounds like you guys'll have a great time," Finn deadpanned, fumbling with his controller in his hands. He looked towards the TV screen and sighed, trying to shake himself from the subject. "Come on, let's go."

The topic was dropped and they returned to their game, but Finn knew that he wouldn't forget about it for a while. Until he and Rachel graduated from high school and got to put everything behind them, he wouldn't forget about it. Somehow, he knew that dropping Rachel and the idea of her would have to come – it just wasn't going to come any time soon.


	13. Chapter 13: Now

She tells herself that she shouldn't dwell on the subject of Finn and his – well, his cancer. Just the thought of it frightens her regardless of whatever relationship she has with him right now.

It's not like this is the first time she's known someone with cancer, anyway. Her aunt had a battle with breast cancer while she was in college that she survived and one of her friends had a brother whose wife had cervical cancer or something like that, but she's never had it affect her so directly before.

Of course, maybe it wouldn't be affecting her so directly if she hadn't felt this need to be with Finn all of the time lately.

They drive back to her apartment separately; Rachel letting Finn go ahead of her as she drives behind him. She's afraid to actually go back to her apartment, because that's where Kurt is. Even though he's her best friend, he really is the last person she wants to see at the moment. She hasn't bothered to tell him why she's needed to use his car or where she had gone with it, and he's just going to give her the third degree when she gets back home, anyway.

She just needs time to sort everything out. Maybe if she goes on a vacation or lives under a rock for twenty years, she'll feel better about everything.

Maybe.

:.:.:

She tells Finn to wait in the lobby bathroom until she gets Kurt out, telling him that it's for his own safety, or benefit, or whatever. It is, after all. If Kurt sees that she's still living with Finn and she walks upstairs trailing behind him, she just knows that he won't be able to give her the end of it.

He notices her pull-out couch and the unorganized half of her living room that Finn occupies and doesn't hesitate to tell her what he thinks about her living with Finn when she walks inside her apartment.

It's fine, really. Maybe she deserves to be yelled at and to be told that she's ruining herself by letting someone who didn't give two shits about her once live with her.

She's crying when there's a knock on the door. At first she thinks that it's Kurt again; having forgotten something or coming back just he can give her another piece of his mind on the matter.

She gets up anyway; knowing that she has to answer the door no matter what.

It doesn't cross her mind that it's Finn, returning from the lobby of her apartment.

"Oh," she says, fighting back her tears and sniffling slightly. "I, um, I didn't think it would be you, Finn," she says, letting him walk past her into the living room. "Here." She gestures a hand out to the living room and sighs deeply, hoping that he doesn't notice her crying.

He walks in and turns over his shoulder to look at her, neither of them saying much. She thinks that maybe it's because he isn't accustomed to saying anything about his cancer, or something else regarding their visit to the doctor's office.

"Have you been crying, Rach?"

She turns over her shoulder to look at him and sniffles, sighing deeply. "No," she says, trying to collect herself as best as possible. "I just – Kurt lit a candle while he was here, and I think I'm allergic to it, and I-"

She stops, watching as he walks up to her. His hand brushes hers and tries to take it in his own, and she lets him. Normally she wouldn't, but she's been letting herself do some pretty crazy things lately. She's sure that letting Finn hold her hand won't make her start to melt or spontaneously combust, or anything like that.

"Hey," he says, his voice soft. She tips her head up to look at him and bites down on her bottom lip, hoping that her tears will stop. He doesn't deserve to see her like this. "Everything's going to be alright, Rachel, okay?" She nods gently and lets her eyes fall shut, her head accidentally resting against his shoulder. "I mean, the doctors have always told me that I have a really good chance at beating this, and-"

"It's not that," she says, her words interrupting him. "I mean, it is, but it's… it's Kurt, and you, and everything else, and I just… I don't want to ruin anything right now, and I…" Her voice trails off and she starts to cry into his shoulder, hands coming up and grabbing little fistfuls of his shirt in her palms. She feels Finn's hand on her back and continues to cry, not trying to be quiet or contain herself any longer.

The way she sees things, it shouldn't matter anymore. Finn's seen her at her best and he's seen her at her worst, and she shouldn't care about him seeing her cry. She's a big enough mess already, anyway.

She looks up from him after a while and rubs her eyes; now red and rimmed with mascara. "I'm sure you're used to seeing me like this," she tells him, laughing bitterly at herself. "A big, crying wreck." She watches him as he shakes his head, but ignores it.

"No," Finn tells her, his voice quiet. They've both brought their voices down to whispers even though they're the only ones in her small apartment. "Rachel, you can't think like that," he tells her. "You've always been the strongest, most independent girl in the entire world. Just because you start crying doesn't mean you're weak, or whatever."

She shakes her head and pinches her eyes shut, unable to look at him.

"My mom always used to tell me that people who cried were the strongest," he tells her, moving a hand down to her cheek so he can pull her face up to look at her. "So, see, you're strong, Rachel. You've just got to let yourself believe it."

Rachel looks at him and whimpers, her bottom lip trembling slightly. She doesn't know what to say to him or about him anymore; it's like everything he does summarizes everything she wants to say. She doesn't know why he's changed or if it's on purpose or accident, but she knows that she likes him. She wants the best for him and doesn't want him to be taken away from her any time soon.

"Thanks," she tells him, moving her hands up on his shoulders. "I… I needed that."

He smiles dumbly and she wraps her arms around him again, squeezing him in a tight embrace.

She likes hugging him. She doesn't know why, but it feels better than she's ever felt before when she's in his arms.

His arms feel like home, and she's afraid to admit it to herself.

:.:.:

She's finishing up her nightly regimen that night when he comes in to brush his teeth. Normally, she wouldn't allow such a thing, but she makes an exception for the night.

It doesn't have to do with the fact that he has cancer now, or whatever, but she knows deep down that it does.

He looks at her and smiles, causing her to smile to herself; tipping her head down and blushing slightly. She pulls her hair from the knot that it's in on top of her head and her dark hair falls down her shoulders and back, hands moving up to shake it out as Finn continues to brush his teeth.

On her way out of the bathroom, she pokes her head past the doorframe and smiles at him.

"You called me 'Rach,' you know."

She watches as he looks confused for a moment and then starts to blush; looking just as embarrassed as she had been moments earlier.

He spits into the sink and arches an eyebrow at her. "What's so wrong about that?"

"Nothing," she says, looking down at her feet. "It's just… the only people who ever called me that were my dads."

He guffaws like it's nothing, but she continues.

"So?"

"And Sam and my boyfriend in college."

She watches his expression change and she giggles sweetly, walking back up towards him, sporting a grin. "There's nothing wrong with it," she assures him. "I've just… the only people who have ever called me that are people that have cared about me."

She watches as the expression on his face changes and her smile softens, approaching him and placing a hand against his broad back.

They look at one another through the mirror, both sporting small, shy smiles that they know are because of one another.

"I care about you, Rachel," he tells her, setting his toothbrush down on the counter. "I always have."

She laughs sweetly and drops her hand from his back, retreating across the hallway to her bedroom.

"Good night, Finn."

:.:.:

She feels like there's more tension between them now than ever. It seems like it's working backwards; like she's supposed to feel that much more comfortable around him now that he's bared his soul, so to speak, and she knows everything about him and what he's going through medically and everything. She's vowed to help him through all of that, too. She drives him to chemo appointments so he doesn't have to drive back to her apartment alone and sometimes she buys him ice cream while he's at the hospital – the non-vegan version, which he seems to enjoy much more than her soy strawberry ice cream that she always has in her freezer.

They still walk on pins and needles around one another, however, and she knows why. She's just afraid to admit it to herself.

It's late and Finn's sitting on his bed/her couch, watching something on comedy Central when she gets back from work. There had been conferences tonight, and although not many parents of students in elementary school cared to talk to their child's music teacher, Rachel had still been required to stay, as per the principal of her school.

The majority of her night has been spent catching up on _Mad Men _on Netflix and organizing her desk (even though it's been organized to the enth-degree already.)

Her feet hurt and her eyes hurt and all she wants to do is lie down on her couch that is no longer her couch, but she feels better when she sees Finn sitting there with the same smile on his face that he greets her with every day she comes home from work. Somehow, he makes everything better for her, no matter what.

"Hey," he says, sitting up slightly on the couch and looking at her with a smile. She tries to respond with a smile, ending up smirking slightly before throwing her purse on the ground by her table where she keeps the fishbowl with her car keys and kicking her shoes off on her way to the kitchen.

Rachel normally isn't this unorganized – but tonight seems to warrant what she's doing.

She hears Finn get off of the couch and follow after her into the kitchen, his feet plodding after hers.

"Hey," he says, his voice sounding more worried than earlier. "Rach, come on."

(He's been calling her Rach ever since that night she had cried in front of him. She's not sure if she actually likes it yet or not.)

She ignores him and turns the radio on in the kitchen, opening the door of the refrigerator and pulling one of the beers that Finn buys for himself out of the side door. She doesn't think he'll mind.

"Will you listen to me?" He asks, raising his voice and beginning to sound frustrated. Rachel pops the cap off of the beer bottle and brings it up to her lips, taking a long swig before setting the bottle down on the counter on her side.

"Quinn came into the school tonight," she says, her voice heavy. "Apparently, she has a kid in kindergarten this year, or something, and I never noticed, or whatever –" She grabs the bottle again and takes another swig of beer. She doesn't think Finn should be too concerned. It's not like she's going to start crying, or anything – now she's just upset.

She watches Finn's face as it goes from confused to upset. "Rachel, you-"

"No, it's fine," she continues, beginning to walk around the kitchen in an angry pace. "I mean, I wasn't expecting her to still be here, you know? Staying here in Lima was totally part of her plan, wasn't it? Getting married to some guy who's 3.5 years older than you and getting a two carat engagement ring before becoming a successful realtor for the neighboring suburb and having a cute little blonde kid that just so happens to get sent to the school I teach at. Isn't that what every eighteen year-old dreams of when they graduate from high school?"

Finn just looks at her, bewildered. She's never gone off on such a tangent with him before. If she weren't so upset and clutching her beer so tightly, she would be afraid that she was scaring him, or something.

But she's not. She's mad and scared and sad and doesn't know if there's a name for an emotion that captures all three of those feelings at the same time, so she just does what she thinks is appropriate for the situation.

"Rachel, I'm sure it was just a coincidence," Finn tells her, opening up the refrigerator and grabbing his own beer. "I mean, I haven't really stayed in touch with Quinn since high school, or anything, so I didn't know." He takes a swig and looks at her, leaning against the counter. "If I had known, I would have said something to you."

"Oh, that's fine," she said, her voice cutting through his. "She made it very clear to me how shocked she was to still see me here, in Lima, Ohio, instead of off in New York or out on the West Coast being an 'extra in a movie,' as she put it." Rachel rolls her eyes and fumes for a moment, continuing to walk around her kitchen and seeming to ignore Finn the longer she goes on for.

"And you know what; screw her for coming into my classroom. She doesn't even have a student of mine, so she has no reason to come into my classroom. She's wasting the time of other parents by trying to show me up with her five-hundred dollar manicure and Abercrombie model of a husband."

"Rachel-"

"She's just stuck in high school, and her husband's no better – some stuck-up freak from Harvard who she met in college who's hobbies include 'rowing and archery'," she says, mimicking Quinn's voice as best as she can.

"Rachel-"

"I swear, if I could go back and give her what was coming to her, I would-"

"Fuck her!" Finn says, raising his voice over Rachel's. It causes her to jump and she looks at him, eyes wide. "Fuck Quinn, and fuck her husband, and fuck her kid, for all I care."

"Finn, I don't think-"

"No, because that's exactly what you're saying," he goes on, looking at her as she stands in the middle of the kitchen, hands on her hips. "I always thought you were the girl who didn't give a fuck about what people said about her," he says, Rachel falling into herself slightly. "You didn't give two shits about what people thought about your clothes, or what you looked like, or your voice, or whatever," he says. "Obviously, I was wrong."

Rachel looks at him, sighing deeply before letting her eyes fall shut. She drums her fingers against her beer bottle, nails clinking against the glass. The dull roar of the radio continues to play on in the background; some indistinct song providing background music for their conversation.

"Look, Finn, I'm sorry," she says, walking towards him, her nylon-wrapped feet padding against the tile of her kitchen floor. "I just… I wasn't expecting her to show up tonight, and I just… I needed someone to vent to." God knew Kurt wasn't willing to listen to her anymore.

He smiles at her sympathetically and walks up to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. For the first time, she doesn't feel uncomfortable when he touches her, and instead she likes it.

"It's fine," he tells her, looking down at her with a smile. She smiles and laughs slightly, taking another sip of her beer before resting her busy had by her side. They laugh with one another for a moment and Finn walks away from her, grabbing his beer again.

"So, what exactly did she say to you?" Finn asks, Rachel returning back to her side of the kitchen. "Like, was it just 'I'm better than you and now you get to see,' or what?"

Rachel rolls her eyes and laughs, tipping her head up to the ceiling. "She said something about how surprising it was that I was still stuck here, teaching elementary schoolers music, and I was like, she's doing the same thing! I mean, not the whole teaching music part, but she's still in Ohio."

She watches as Finn nods and starts up again, not missing a beat. "And there really wasn't anything else after that, just some stupid remark of how great she's doing and how surprised she was that I hadn't gotten my nose fixed yet."

She watches Finn as his mouth hangs open as she takes another swig from her beer.

"She actually said that?" He asks, looking at Rachel with a surprised look on his face. He walks up to her again and she presses her back into the counter, feeling Finn stand in front of her. "Rachel, she's-"

"Horrible," she says, finishing his sentence. Finn laughs and sets his beer down on the counter by her side.

"Yeah," he says, looking down at her with a smile. "Horrible."

They look at one another and Rachel bites down on her bottom lip nervously, tipping her head down and trying to pay more attention to her feet rather than Finn. She feels his hand rest against her waist and her breath catches in her throat, eyes wide as she looks back up at him.

"Finn, I…" Her voice trails off nervously, hands fumbling for something to hold on to. She looks up at him and breathes heavily, feeling Finn move in closer on her as time wears on.

The song on the radio switches and she looks up at him as he starts to laugh.

"What?" She asks, starting to laugh herself. He doesn't move from in front of her and instead holds her closer, fingers accidentally tickling her sides and causing her to giggle. He doesn't respond and she continues laughing, keening up so that she can rest her hands on his shoulders. "What is it?"

"This song," he says, looking down at her with a smile. She stops laughing for a moment to listen to the radio; both of them going silent for a moment to hear the song playing through her kitchen.

Sure enough, it's that one Lumineers song that she vaguely remembers playing in her car the night she was drunk and Finn drove her home.

"Oh, God," she says, shutting her eyes and hanging her head down, still trying to avoid looking at Finn completely. "This was the song I started shout-singing in my car that one night, isn't it?" She looks back up at Finn, who's looking at her with a smile.

"Yeah," he says, Rachel moving underneath his arms so that she's able to stand up straight. His arms are still around her waist and the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that she doesn't mind. "It's just… every time I hear this song, I think of you," he says, smiling at her sweetly.

She rolls her eyes and laughs at him, shaking her head slightly. "Right, because I sounded so horrible-"

"No," he says, looking at her as his voice takes a turn for the serious. "It's because it reminds me of you and… everything you are."

Rachel looks at him and studies his face, carefully trying to find where he's bluffing.

He's not.

"You do, huh?" She giggles nervously and loses her footing as her heart stammers; catching herself against the countertop she's been leaning against.

"Don't worry," Finn says, catching her by the waist as she stumbles. "I've… I've got you."

Rachel looks up into his eyes and feels her throat go dry; licking her lips nervously as she looks back up at him. She cranes her neck up and her lips come close to his, gasping slightly before standing up on her toes to meet him eye to eye (or at least as close as she can come without hurting herself).

"I know you do," she says, her whisper so quiet it's almost impossible to hear. "Because I've got you too."

She leans in to kiss him and he reciprocates, their lips meeting one another in a hurry. Rachel whimpers softly and looks at him, feeling his arms around her waist.

They don't say much after that. She's perfectly fine with kissing him in the corner of her kitchen for the time being – which is what they do; Finn's hands free to slide up the side of her skirt and her fingers scraping down his chest. She doesn't even realize how long they've just been standing there, kissing one another, the radio playing on in the background.

And when the song ends, she knows that she and Finn Hudson have a song together.

And the more the thought marinates in her brain, the more she doesn't care.


	14. Chapter 14: Then

Graduation came upon them a lot sooner than he had expected. It was like everything had wrapped up in an instant and April and May sped by as fast as they could, not bothering to wait for anyone in their wake. The only subject of conversation in Finn's house was how excited his mother was that he was finally graduating and how thrilled she was that he had finally decided what he was doing with his life once he graduated.

He had ultimately decided on the military. It seemed like it was the perfect solution; no need for excellent grades in high school (which he didn't have, even though he put forth a solid effort most of the time), didn't cost thousands of dollars in tuition, and he was doing his civic duty, or whatever. Serving his country and all that.

Besides, girls liked men in uniforms, or whatever. Maybe joining the army would help his ability to actually find girls who weren't borderline psychotic to date and spend his time with.

Prom came and went. Finn ended up spending the night with his cousin, ordering a pizza and playing Call of Duty in his basement. His mom had taken up a late shift and they were left home alone to their own devices – although Finn knew most of his time would be spent in front of the television set.

His cousin, Benji, was a freshman in high school. While he didn't go to the same school as Finn, the two had grown up practically attached at the hip. While Finn didn't exactly like babysitting him, they had the occasional conversation that he enjoyed. He wasn't a horrible cousin, after all.

"So why didn't you go to prom?" Ben asked, shaking his hair from his eyes. Even though the haircut was somewhat passé, Benji insisted on having hair hang into his eyes and flip up around the sides of his face. He continued to stare up at the television screen sitting on the entertainment center, fingers aggressively pressing buttons on his video game controller. "Isn't prom supposed to be like, a really big deal or something?"

Finn laughed and looked down at Benji for a second, trying his best to pay attention to both him and the television screen at the same time. "I don't know," he said, shrugging slightly. He leans to the side slightly and tries to shoot at one of Benji's men, taking him out completely. Even if Benji was his cousin, it wasn't like Finn was going to go easy on him just because he was younger than him. "I mean, prom's not that big of a deal, Ben. You'll figure that out when you get to high school."

Benji used his controller to pause the game and threw it down on the ground, looking down at Finn as he got up to get a can of soda from the counter in the back of the basement. "Yeah, right," he said, wiping his hands off on his shorts. "When Katie went to prom, it was this big deal." Katie was Benji's older sister and Finn's older cousin. "What, is it different for guys or something?"

"Yeah," Finn said, trying to find his escape of the conversation in what Benji was saying. "I mean, it's cool, I guess. I went last year and had a pretty good time." He decided not to tell Benji all about the situation with Rachel the year before. Better not to revisit the memories he had tried so hard to suppress for a year.

"Did you have a date?"

"Yeah," Finn said, watching him as he walked back to the couch with another can of Coke. "You remember my girlfriend last year, Quinn?"

Benji nodded as he started to pop the tab on her soda. "Oh, the blonde one?" Finn nodded and shrugged slightly as he watched a smug look cross over Benji's face. "You broke up with her, right?"

Finn nodded. "Yeah, man. It just… it didn't work out."

"Good," Benji said, smiling slightly. "I never really liked her when I met her."

Finn looked at Benji and laughed bitterly to himself, thinking it was funny how Benji had expressed his dislike towards Quinn. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that after he broke up with Quinn, more people came out to him and told him about how they didn't like her, or how they didn't like the two of them together. It was assuring, in a way.

"Who was that one girl you went to go see in that play?" Benji asked, taking a sip from his soda. Finn swore that he could feel his heart stop in his chest the moment Benji asked his question. "She was really pretty. And she seemed nice. She was nice to me, anyway."

Finn felt his throat go dry and sighed deeply, looking away from Benji for a moment. He felt ridiculous; like some lonely guy in an 80's romantic comedy. He was definitely Jon Cryer in _Pretty In Pink _– only he wasn't friends with Rachel and she wasn't turning sixteen or whatever. He had never really seen the entire movie.

He shouldn't have felt so strongly about her and what she was turning into. Rachel was becoming an adult; proud and opinionated and smart and beautiful, just like she always had been. The only difference now was that she had someone to support her through all of that.

And much to his dismay, it wasn't him.

"Rachel," he said, his voice quiet. He heard Benji start to laugh and look up at him with a smile. "She's… she's at prom tonight."

"Oh," Benji said, taking another sip from his soda and belching softly. He was still younger and hadn't mastered a full-on belch yet. "She probably likes you."

Finn felt his heart skip a beat and he looked at Benji, rolling his eyes as he tried to force a laugh out awkwardly. "Yeah, right," he said, looking down at his feet and trying to study the pattern on his socks more than the conversation he was having with Benji. "Believe me, Benji, Rachel… she doesn't like me." He sighed and shook his head slightly. "She's better off without me."

He totally didn't mean to sound like some melodramatic high schooler, but he must have – otherwise, Benji wouldn't have reacted in the way he had.

"Come on," the younger boy said, his hair falling in his eyes. "What if, like, she has a big crush on you and you just don't know anything about it?"

Finn rolled his eyes and picked up his controller again. He didn't want to have to tell him anything about his past with Rachel – it was too long and complicated (and probably boring to someone who probably didn't care).

"Look, we had a fight last year, or whatever…" Finn started, looking back down at his feet like he was afraid of the whole mess. "We haven't had a real conversation in a long time."

Benji looked at him, not bothering to say anything.

"If I could ever make it up to her, though, I would," Finn said, now practically talking to himself instead of his cousin. "One day, I'll find the chance to make everything right with her again."

"I hope you do," Benji said, scrunching his nose up on his freckled face, nearly identical to Finn's. "She seems like she's really cool, Finn."

:.:.:

Finn and Rachel had one class together their senior year; English. Finn was somewhat decent at English, but he quickly learned at the beginning of their senior year that Rachel was phenomenal in the subject.

It wasn't like she was bad at anything school-related, though.

Actually, Finn thought it was impossible for Rachel to be bad at anything.

She walked into class the Monday after prom and bothered to smile at him as she sat down at her desk – conveniently placed directly in front of him. It was like his teachers wanted to make that year the most difficult as possible for him.

"How was prom?" Finn asked her as the final bell rung and their teacher walked to the front of the class, the whiteboard marker squeaking against the board as they wrote something for the class to read.

He regretted saying what he had the moment she turned around to look at him, eyes wide and her lips turned up into a smile.

"It was nice," she said, Finn noticing how she started to play with the hem of her skirt nervously. "Sam and I had a very nice time, too, if that's what you're asking."

Finn just looked at her and felt his throat go dry. He really didn't want to hear her go off about how great of a time she had with Sam, or whatever. He already knew about that, whether she wanted to keep it a secret or not. He was a guy, and guys talked with one another. He wouldn't tell anyone else about it, of course, because he knew it would make her upset and was the wrong thing to do, but he knew. Whether or not she said anything about it, he knew.

"You weren't on the prom planning committee again this year, were you?" He asked, hoping to steer the subject in a different direction than the one it was heading in.

"No," she said, blinking and tossing her hair over her shoulder. "I think I was too much of a hazard to have back up on that stage again." She laughed bitterly and Finn wanted to laugh along with her, but he decided that it would be rude. "They did allow me to add my creative input, however," she said, laughing slightly to herself, a real smile spreading across her face. "The theme this year was my idea."

"What was the theme?"

She laughed and tipped her head down, batting her eyelashes before looking up at him. "A New York Night on Broadway."

Finn looked at her and started laughing, watching as she started to laugh at what she had said. "That's… well, that has you written all over it."

She nodded and laughed, looking at him with a smile.

Her laugh was perfect.

"Miss Berry, Mister Hudson," the teacher's voice echoed from the front of the classroom. Finn watched as Rachel turned around in her desk, banging her knee against the side of her chair.

"Sorry," she said, her voice soft. Finn watched as she moved a hand down to touch her knee that she had hurt moments earlier. The two of them faced the front of the classroom and Finn tried his best to listen to the lecture about _The Great Gatsby, _but he was too busy watching Rachel as she seemed to fall into herself, embarrassed that she had been called out in front of the entire class.

"Hey, I just wanted to say, that sounded like a really cool prom theme," he whispered, tapping her on the shoulder as he leaned up to talk to her.

But there was no use. Rachel didn't bother to turn around in her desk to look at him, or throw a smile in his direction, or even acknowledge that he had spoken to her.

Instead, she just continued to stare at the whiteboard ahead of them, jotting down notes in her notebook occasionally when she saw fit.

:.:.:

"So, was it worth it?" Finn had been sitting in Puck's basement the following weekend, Santana propped up on his lap. They hadn't become anything serious (and never would), but Santana had started spending more time with Puck simply because she could.

That, and apparently she had gotten sick of spending time with Quinn.

Santana eyed Sam and started smiling to herself. "There wasn't like, a gnome protecting it or whatever, was there?" She started snickering to herself and Puck followed, Finn looking down in his lap. He didn't really want to be there, in Puck's basement and drinking stale beer, talking about whatever had happened on prom night.

Sam just laughed and Finn tipped his head up to look at him. "I don't think it would be the right thing to talk about that, Santana," he said, looking like he was actually being serious and wanted to stay true to his word.

_Good, _Finn thought, playing with the pull tab on his beer can. _Maybe I won't have to hear about whatever details he has to spare about whatever happened on prom night._

"Yeah, right," the girl said, rolling her eyes. "You can't sit here and lie to me and tell me that you haven't told Puck about you popping Berry's cherry." Finn coughed awkwardly and Puck laughed as Santana crossed her arms across her chest. "I mean, I can understand not telling Finn, but-"

"Why wouldn't he tell me?"

"Because you like her," Santana said, sneering in Finn's direction. "If Sam said one thing about whatever he did with her the other night, you would just end up spraying your shorts and leaving. Besides, you're too much of a 'gentleman,' or whatever. You would just pretend not to want to hear it or something."

Finn looked over at Santana, his mouth hanging open slightly. He didn't know what to say to Santana in response; knowing that she would just snap back at him with some sharp retort.

That, and he really didn't want to say anything to her. He didn't understand why she was even there in the first place – Finn was positive that Santana hated him and Rachel and he still couldn't wrap his head around why Puck liked to spend so much time with her when she wasn't willing to sleep with him at the drop of a hat.

"You don't need to bring me into their relationship, Santana," Finn said, her voice still sounding nervous despite his want to sound like he was confident. "If you haven't noticed, Sam's sitting right there."

Santana rolled her eyes and got up off of Puck's lap, grabbing her purse and walking towards the stairs of the basement. "Whatever," she sneered, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She made her way up the stairs and the door slammed behind her, the three boys in the basement jumping slightly as the walls rattled.

"Jeez," Puck said, taking a sip of his beer as he looked at Finn. "I don't think anyone's gotten her to shut up that fast… ever."

Finn rolled his eyes and sighed, pinching his empty beer can with his hand. He didn't want to think about Rachel or his relationship with Rachel, or anything concerning her anymore.

If he could just wrap up his senior year and not have to worry about Rachel anymore, he would be fine. He wouldn't necessarily be happy, but he would be fine in the long run.

:.:.:

Graduation wasn't as big of a deal as he thought it would be. It was outside on the football field; a large stage set up with a podium and the principals and teachers seated in front of all of the rows of students down on the field, all sitting with smiles as they waited to walk up on the stage and accept their diplomas. Finn always thought it would be like a big, momentous occasion, but it ended up being the exact opposite.

He didn't end up sitting next to anyone in particular; his last name wasn't close to anyone in his graduation class that he would have wanted to sit next to. When it was time for him to get his diploma, he got up and walked across the stage, smiling as he could hear his mom in the audience, cheering and smiling and probably trying to take as many pictures of him as possible.

He only ended up seeing Rachel after the ceremony, talking with Kurt and taking a picture with him before leaving.

She wasn't supposed to matter to him anymore, anyway. They were supposed to graduate and move on with their lives, going wherever life took them and hoping that they never crossed paths again.

Of course, that was only what they were _supposed _to do.

:.:.:

Rachel's graduation party was almost exactly how he thought it was going to be. Her backyard was decorated with pink and gold streamers, Christmas lights strung up on her porch and twinkling once the sun had started to go down. People were there from every walk of her life; all smiling and happy to be congratulating the lucky graduate as she twirled past them.

Finn had only gotten the chance to see Rachel, not to talk to her. She was wearing a cotton candy pink dress that swung around her legs when she walked, her hair pulled back into a messy side braid that fell down her shoulder.

She was barefoot, he noticed, her toenails painted a bright pink that coordinated with her dress. Even though he had never been close to her, Finn never took Rachel as someone who would be alright running around their backyard barefoot.

He and Sam sat down on a bench by a table full of cupcakes, each one iced with pink frosting. They sat under a canopy even though the sun had gone down, the Christmas lights around the porch and occasional burning tiki torch staked in the ground providing them with enough light to see one another.

They were both nursing pink lemonades, which seemed to be Rachel's signature drink for the evening if she were supposed to have one.

"Sorry I tagged along," Finn said, wiping his hands off on his shorts. "I mean, you know, she's _your _girlfriend and I'm pretty sure she hates me, and-"

"It's fine," Sam said with a laugh. "I mean, it's her grad party. Aren't we kind of all supposed to go to everyone's?" Finn laughed nervously and was relieved that Sam had agreed to let him go with him. He knew that if he had gone to her grad party by himself, he would have felt like an awkward idiot.

Too bad, because he still felt like an awkward idiot.

Before he was able to think over the bad decision he had made, however, Rachel was walking up to the both of them, a toothy grin stuck to her face.

"Hi," she said to Sam, prompting him to stand up in front of her. She giggled and stood up on her toes to press a kiss to his lips, not seeming to notice Finn sitting directly in front of her.

He couldn't really blame her for ignoring him. He probably looked like a complete moron.

"Hey," Sam said, hands running down her sides. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a purple envelop, handing it to her. "Congratulations," he said, Rachel laughing and resting her hands against his chest.

"Congratulations to you too," she said sweetly, giggling again. Her laugh played on a musical scale; filling her large backyard even though she seemed like she was trying to stay quiet as long as she was talking to Sam. "You know that you didn't need to get me anything."

"I know," Sam said, continuing to stare at her. "And I didn't, I just got you a card. My parents wanted to sign it and everything."

She started to blush and kissed him again, this time longer than the last. Finn could tell that she was trying to be discreet about the kisses she gave him (probably because her parents were a few feet away), spending more time laughing at what they were doing than being affectionate with him.

"I'll be right back," Sam told her, grabbing her hand before walking away and giving it a squeeze. "I need to use the bathroom."

Finn watched as Rachel murmured a quiet 'ok' as he ran off, waving at him with a dumb look on her face. He took a sip of his lemonade and watched as she turned around to look at him, her skirt coming up around her legs slightly.

"Hi, Finn," she seemed to manage. He mustered up a smile and took a moment to look at her – not leer at her, but actually take in the image of her standing in front of him, wide eyes and a strawberry smile and long legs despite her petite frame – which he still couldn't wrap his head around. "You look… really nice."

He snapped out of his daze and blinked a few times, looking back up at her so she could speak to him without feeling like he was completely gone.

(He was only halfway gone, really.)

"I'm wearing a t shirt and shorts, Rachel," he said, laughing slightly. He wanted to compliment her on her dress or how her hair made her look like she was a mermaid (would that end up sounding weird?) or how he thought it was cute how she had decided not to wear any shoes, but he didn't say anything.

"Well, you look nice," she told him, walking over to the part of the bench where Sam had been sitting earlier. She tucked the skirt of her dress under her legs and sat down next to him, staring down into her lap adamantly. There was a long silence between them; neither of them being able to find the courage to say what they wanted to to the other.

Finn had thought of something truly great to say to her when she had started up instead, which caused him to breathe a sigh of relief. If anyone were to be ready to start the conversation, it would have been Rachel.

"So, um, what are your plans for college?" She asked him, tugging at the hem of her dress. "You're going to play football, aren't you?"

"Not exactly," he told her, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Um, I was hoping to get a football scholarship, but, you know, even since Sam took over as quarterback, the college scouts didn't pay too much attention to me, and my grades weren't the best, and-"

"Oh, Finn," she said, her voice oozing with sympathy for him. "I'm so sorry. That must be so difficult." She tipped her head up to look at him, trying her best to smile for him. "You're still going to school though, aren't you?"

"The military, actually," he told her, sighing. A small part of him wanted her to swoon over the fact that he was going to be in the army, or whatever, because girls were supposed to like men in uniforms according to Puck, or whatever. "But, you know, it'll be cool. I get to learn how to use a gun and wear a uniform."

She looked up at him with wide eyes, like she was afraid of him. "Well, I just hope you're safe," she said. Finn wasn't sure why she seemed so worried about him all of a sudden. "I mean, you know, being a soldier is dangerous, isn't it?"

Finn laughed as she looked up at him, eyes wide. She didn't seem like she was mad at him anymore (or least not as mad as she once had been), and it caused him to want to talk to her and have a real conversation with her again after what had almost been a year, but he couldn't. There was always the chance that she was going to be just as upset as she was a year ago at prom.

"What are you doing with your life now, though?" He asked her, watching as she looked back out into the yard. Most of her friends had left by then; leaving only the friends of her dads that seemed to be all enjoying themselves without the girl the party was being thrown for in the first place. "I mean, you're going to be all famous and stuff in a year, right?" He laughed and felt more relaxed as he loosened up around her.

Right there would be where he would throw in something like 'make sure to remember me when you're out in Hollywood, okay?', but he didn't think that they had patched up their relationship yet in order for him to ask her that.

"I'm staying here, actually," she said, her voice smaller and quiet. Finn had a hard time understanding her as she spoke and watched as she kicked her feet out from under her on the bench, swinging her legs idly as she spoke. "University of Ohio, for Music Education."

"Oh," was all he could say, feeling all of the breath leave his stomach the moment he said anything. For as long as he had known Rachel, he always knew her as the girl who was going to leave everything she had in Ohio behind for bigger and better things out in New York, or California, or whatever. She wanted to be on Broadway, and she wanted to sing at places like Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden and places people would only dream about performing at.

That was the difference with Rachel. Other people their age dreamed about stuff like that, but Rachel actually seemed like she was going to be able to go the distance and do it. No one else could ever picture her doing anything else with her life; a life committed to the stage and performing seemed to be the only thing in the world that fit her like a glove.

"You didn't want to go to school for theatre?"

She fell silent and started picking at a sliver of wood on the bench, staying tight-lipped for a good minute before Finn could do anything about it. He didn't want to pressure her into saying anything about whatever had happened with her and her college decision – for all he knew, she had always wanted to be a music teacher and she had just never said anything about it. Some people were like that, weren't they?

Of course, he didn't think that Rachel was the type to keep what she wanted in life a secret to everyone around her.

"I did, things just didn't pan out the way I was hoping they would." She turned her head up to look at Finn, eyes wide and her mouth moving a mile a minute as she spoke. Finn still found it hard to actually look at Rachel while she spoke to him; he always felt like his stomach was going to tie itself into too tricky of a knot to untie or his head would start feeling like it was swimming so much that he would drown in his thoughts. "When you want to go to school for theatre, or any kind of profession in the performing arts field, you need to audition," she said, gesticulating broadly and not losing eye contact with Finn as she spoke. "Well, I was ready to audition, and when I got there, it was like I just forgot _everything_," she said, waving her hands in front of her face like she was painting a picture for him. "I got up there to sing, and I – nothing came out," she said, turning away from Finn again. "I was… I was so scared."

Finn looked down at her and watched as she seemed to distance herself from him again, worrying her dress in her hands. "But Miss Pillsbury told me that I should go to school to be a music teacher, since I like music so much, and then maybe I can teach theatre on the side, or something." She turned back to face him, fear in her eyes. "I just don't want to be stuck doing community theatre for the rest of my life, Finn. I'm better than that."

He wanted to laugh, but he realized that this was a serious matter for Rachel, and she was genuinely afraid of what her future was going to become.

Hey, at least they had something in common.

"You'll be fine, Rachel," he told her, afraid that he would end up saying something wrong. "I mean, you're super smart and pretty and stuff… you'll be really successful with whatever you do."

She wasn't paying attention anymore, however. Sam had come back from the bathroom and was walking up to her again, Finn feeling the need to leave.

She wasn't his to worry about, anyway. Rachel was going to move on to bigger and better things, even if she ended up staying there, at home.

Finn just knew he was never going to see her again.


	15. Chapter 15: Now

She can't sleep that night.

She hasn't been kissed like that in a long time. Sure, she's kissed people before, but she hasn't had the knee-buckling, heart stopping kinds of kisses since college, she thinks.

It's why she's lying in her bed and feeling her head reel instead of trying to fall asleep like she would normally be doing.

She had been pressed up against her counter for a decent amount of time, hands roaming across Finn's chest and his hands grabbing at her all over the place and feeling like she was actually wanted by someone for the first time in a long time. They didn't say much to one another; their hands seeming to do enough of the talking.

There's a small part of her in the pit of her stomach that wants to get out of bed and walk down the hall so she can see Finn again, and spend the night with him on the couch watching _South Park _until she fell asleep like he always does. She doesn't want to lose him for the moment, because it's totally logical for her to think that if she doesn't keep an eye on him at all times that he's going to disappear, just like that.

And then the logic in her head starts to kick in again and she comes to her senses. She can't just fall asleep with Finn after making out with him in her kitchen and pretend like it's something totally normal.

Besides, Berkley's out there on the couch with him. That should be enough for her.

:.:.:

She manages to sneak out of the house before Finn wakes up the next morning so she can go to work. She doesn't want to talk to him about last night. They had left it in the kitchen without saying much to each other, Rachel awkwardly retreating to her room.

That, and she doesn't want to see him in the morning.

She's afraid that her stomach is going to fill with butterflies and they won't be able to go away by the time she gets to work.

:.:.:

By the time Rachel gets back home after work, she decides that there's no use in trying to hide herself from Finn. Besides, he's usually asleep on the couch when she gets back from work. She thinks it's because of the chemo, and he's told her that being tired is supposed to be one of the side effects of his treatment.

He's not asleep, but he's doing what she's always found him doing at this point – watching TV and eating potato chips or Oreos or some other food she hasn't had in her apartment ever. Most of the time when she comes home and finds him like this, she normally chastises him for not using a coaster or wiping his hands on the couch cushions instead of the napkins that she's told him about countless times.

This time, however, she doesn't want to yell at him for anything. All Rachel wants to do is to be able to sneak back into her apartment without needing to talk to Finn.

She hardly makes it to the kitchen, however, before he stops her dead in her tracks.

"Rachel," he says, head popping up from the couch slightly. Rachel winces as he looks at her, nearly dropping her bags as she stops on her way to the kitchen. "We need to talk."

"Talk?" She stammers, trying to buy as much time as possible. "Why would we need to talk about anything?" She finds a stack of papers on the table by the door and starts going through them nervously, trying to buy as much time as she can. "We don't need to talk about it, because we live together, and we don't need to worry about what's happening between us, or whatever, and-"

"Rachel," he says, stopping her before she goes off on a tangent. "Stop."

She looks away from the papers she's shuffling on the table and looks up at Finn, her breathing ragged and eyes wide. There's not a single part of her that wants to talk to him about this, and she doesn't think that there ever will be, either. It's not like people who get involved with one another need to sit down and work through the logistics of their relationship. She thinks that they should be allowed to simply progress with whatever it is that they have with one another.

The only thing is, she's afraid to even think about that. Whatever they had in her kitchen the night before was just the two of them acting on feelings that she didn't even think were real up until that point, and now they're just left to clean up the mess that their emotions had made.

"Finn," she starts, trying to make her breathing continue at a normal pace. "We can't do this. Not with you, and me, and your…" She doesn't want to say it not only because she thinks it might sound borderline offensive, but because she's afraid to let her mind wander down that path; knowing that it's the inevitable that she'll have to face at some point in her future.

"I think we should just stay friends," she tells him, walking into the kitchen and doing everything in power to ignore him. It's awfully hard to do, but she manages. "Or whatever we were before last night. Alright?"

He follows after her and she can hear him behind her, almost afraid to turn around because she knows that she'll have to tip her head up and look at him and try everything in her power to resist him again, so keeps her back turned to him at all costs. If anything, he'll take it as a sign to walk away from her before they continue to cause any more damage to their already fraying relationship.

"I don't think we can do that," he says, his voice soft. He coughs slightly and Rachel turns around to face him, breaking every rule she's just made for herself only because she's afraid it's because that he's sick, and she doesn't want him to be sick simply because it scares her more than his cancer. "I… I really like you Rachel."

"Well, I would hope you would, considering we've been living together for the past-"

"No," he says, interrupting her. "I mean, I really, really like you."

The way he phrases it makes him sound like their back in middle school and he's professing his feelings to her the way someone whose voice hadn't changed yet and a mouth full of braces would tell her something. Even so, it causes her heart to start to melt and her mouth to hang open slightly, shocked at what she's hearing.

Finn Hudson can't like her. He's the one who ignored her every feeling in high school and didn't seem to care about whether she was feeling good or bad, so why would he start caring now?

_Maybe it's a part of his bucket list, _she thinks to herself, trying to keep her mind occupied as he continues to look at her. _Maybe he just feels bad for me and wants to make everything up before he gets sicker or something. Maybe by saying that he likes me, he thinks that's he'll be able to patch up all of the holes in my heart or something._

"You sound like you're in eighth grade," she teases him, trying to avoid the topic. Rachel pushes past him and walks out of the kitchen to her bedroom, where she pulls her hair out of the ponytail that it's been in for the day and kicks her heels off by the side of her bed. He follows after her and she doesn't want him to, but she turns around at looks at him, knowing that she has to address this somehow.

"Look, I don't want to do this, alright?" She pushes her hair from her eyes and tips her head up so she can look at him, inflating her chest and thinking that she looks much more powerful than she actually is. "You've been living her for the past month or whatever and I've been fine with it, because nothing's happened between us. I mean, besides that time you accidentally saw me naked, I think we've been doing fine, and this – " She pauses, shutting her eyes and sighing. "Last night was just a bump in the road, alright? I was upset and didn't know what I was doing, and-"

She's stopped by Finn grabbing her by the waist and pulling her body into his, lips crashing against her own. Her eyes are wide and she looks at him, wanting to swat at his chest and tell him to stop because this is wrong, or whatever, but she doesn't.

She feels like she's melting into his arms and the thoughts of her pushing herself away from him stop.

"That's just a 'bump in the road?'" He asks her as he pushes her away from him, a stupid smile stuck to his face. Rachel looks at him and feels her stomach flip, not wanting to answer him. She's just going to sound stupid either way.

"Finn, I-"

"Why are you so afraid to do this?" He asks her, walking around her room. Now that she thinks of it, Finn's never had the chance to be inside her bedroom. It was one of the words she had created when he had first moved in and written on the whiteboard attached to her refrigerator, and she trusts that he hasn't broken any of the rules that she initially set up for the both of them to follow. "I mean, yeah, Rachel, what happened last night was totally… unplanned, or whatever, but I wouldn't have done it if I didn't like you."

"You don't like me," she tells him, crossing her arms across her chest. She feels her throat close and she stars choking on a sob and it makes her upset, because this is really one of the worst times for her to start crying. "You've never cared about anything I've ever done, Finn, and you know you haven't."

He looks at her and she nods her head, raising her eyebrows up slightly.

"You and Quinn and Santana and Puck and the rest of them treated me like garbage in high school, and I never got one apology for it," she tells him, her anger bubbling up from her toes and spewing out of her mouth. "And you played this stupid little act like you pretended to care, but I knew that you didn't just because you never did anything about it." She sits down at the foot of her bed and sighs, hanging her head down in her lap. "So if you get to pretend like you're in high school again and say that you like me, I get to remind you about how you treated me in high school." She starts to cry and does everything she can to keep herself from sobbing uncontrollably, knowing that he's going to try and comfort her if she does.

He doesn't, however, and she hears him walking around her room before sitting next to her on the foot of her bed, nudging her in the side to get her attention.

"I found this the other day," he tells her, causing Rachel to open her eyes. She looks down into his lap and sees their yearbook from their junior year, prompting an eye roll from her.

"You've been in my room," she says bitterly, looking away from him. "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't-"

"Will you just listen to me?" He says, causing her to be quiet. Rachel watches as he opens up her yearbook that she's bothered to save on her bookshelf for almost ten years. "I wanted to look through it, because I threw mine away, and I found what I wrote to you in it that year." She looks at him and sighs, glancing over at the book that he has open on his lap.

There's a picture of her and Finn standing with one another at one of the performances of the musical, because she's wearing her costume and makeup from the show and is holding a big bouquet of flowers in one hand. She can see that he had scribbled over it in pen and wrote what he had when she allowed him to sign it their junior year, but she doesn't think that she ever bothered to read it.

"I said, 'I don't think I've ever met someone as smart, talented and as beautiful as you before. I think that no matter happens within the next few years, you'll always be as cool as you are today. You're one of the only girls I know that doesn't care about what other people think about her – and in my book, that's the most attractive thing you could possibly do. Have a great summer, Finn.'"

He looks at her and Rachel looks back at him, sighing slightly. "I wasn't lying when I wrote that."

She nods her head and pushes her hair out of her eyes and behind her ear. "No, I - I know you weren't." She wants to kiss him and have him hold her in his arms while she goes on about everything that happened between the two of them in high school, but she's afraid to.

(Lately, it seems like she's afraid of everything.)

"I was never that girl in high school, though," she tells him, her voice bitter and weighed down with tears. "I was always afraid of what people would think of me if I did something wrong, or said something wrong, or spent time with the wrong people." She swallows thickly, still afraid to actually look at Finn. "You were wrong for thinking I was _attractive _for being all of those things."

The words stick in her mouth like taffy. She's never really had someone care as much as Finn seems to care about her before. The relationships that Rachel's managed to have over the years have never been romantic or all kinds of wonderful before.

All of them have seemed to end with her going through a box of tissues and listening to some Judy Garland album on repeat until she feels like she's ready to grow up and face the world again.

Finn sighs and looks at her, resting his hand on her knee. "I always thought that everyone was wrong for treating you the way they did in high school," he tells her. She scoffs and finally turns to face him, holding back tears.

"It's not like everything magically stopped after high school," she tells him. "When I went to college, I was still treated like I was some giant joke. I mean, people didn't think it was funny to humiliate me in front of the entire student body, but I was never the girl I wanted to be when I was little. I always wanted to be the girl that everybody looked up to." She sighs and leans her head against his shoulder; only because she feels that they've made it okay for both of them to do those kinds of things with one another now.

"You know how you always had that friend growing up that everyone wanted to sit next to on the bus? And so they would sit in the middle, because, naturally, it was the best way to solve an argument of two people wanting to sit next to one person?" Finn nods and watches as she falls into herself. "Well, I was never that girl. I was always the one who people would rather avoid than spend time with."

She watches as Finn smiles and looks at her sweetly. "I thought you said you had a boyfriend in college?" He asks, nudging her in the side gently. "Clearly someone must have liked you, Rachel."

"My relationship with Brody was very…. physical, I guess." She doesn't want to tell him about her past relationships, only because they're few and far between and they aren't exactly the proudest moments of her life. "We met in college and I liked him, and he seemed to like me, but we were never very serious. We dated and were romantic for a while, but it eventually turned into just sex, or whatever." She feels more embarrassed the longer she talks about it, so she tries to laugh to make it seem like she doesn't care about it as much. "I've never really dated anyone who's _loved _me, I guess."

She watches Finn as he looks at her and he grabs her hand, causing her to tip her head up to look at him.

"Would you ever date me?"

His question makes her feel like all of the feeling has escaped from her body and she feels herself start to tear up again.

"No," she tells him, her honestly even going to the lengths of scaring herself. "Because I'm afraid of falling in love with you."

She feels him press a kiss to the top of her head and she turns up to face him, catching his lips in her own. She kisses him and pushes him over on the bed so that they're both lying down on her bed, next to one another and their hands resting on the other; Rachel feeling Finn's large hands resting on her waist and her small hands resting against his chest. Her heart feels like it's going to beat out of her chest and she whimpers slightly as he continues kissing her, ultimately pulling away from him when the swimming sensation in her head gets to be too much.

"We don't have to love each other," he tells her, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She laughs softly and feels her face begin to pink the longer he looks at her. "We can just… be in love with the idea of each other."

She shakes her head and rakes a hand through his hair, trying her best not to cry, whatever the costs may be. "I just don't want to lose you," she tells him, knowing that her words are probably going to hurt her more than they will him. "You're sick, Finn, and I can't… I can't fall in love with someone who I don't know will be there in five years, or ten years, or-"

He laughs bitterly and looks at her, his smile making her feel like she's going to fall apart. "It's going to be alright, Rachel," he tells her, pressing a kiss to her lips. She kisses him back and continues to cry, feeling him pull her closer to him as she continues. "And if that's what you're afraid of, then I can… I don't need to stay with you anymore, or-"

"No," she tells him, shaking her head. "I want you to stay, Finn." She leans in to kiss him again, feeling his grip tighten around her waist. "I want you to stay and I want to be with you, and I don't want you to be alone while you fight this." He smiles at her and she smiles, giggling as she wipes her tears from her eyes. "If you're alright with it, I mean."

"Of course I am," he tells her, smiling and kissing her on the bridge of her nose. "I don't want to lose you, either."

:.:.:

A month goes by and they're still in the awkward living arrangement that she's set up from the beginning. She offers him a job at her school, because they're hiring in the library for assistants that don't need teaching degrees or licenses or anything, and he does, just because he tells her that he wants to spend the extra time with her.

She knows, however, that it's because he needs the money. Rachel doesn't understand how he still has enough money to continue with his treatments and everything, but he does. She refuses to ask him to help out on the rent or her electrical bill or anything else like that, simply because she feels sorry for him. She doesn't want him to feel like he actually needs to pay the rent or anything like that, but she feels like he needs a job.

Besides, seeing him at her job is more fun than she would have expected. She waves to him when she sees him shelving books in the library and he waves back at her, and sometimes when they're both in the staff lounge getting coffee at the same time he kisses her on the cheek, but that's about as far as they take anything. She doesn't want to lose her job, after all.

Finn's chemotherapy gets more intense and Rachel begins to take note in his weight loss and how lethargic he seems when they get home; sometimes too tired to even turn on the TV.

Some nights, he just lies on the couch with Berkley in his lap and she feels bad about everything. There are some nights where she starts to cry as she brushes her teeth at night or drives into work in the morning after dropping him off at the hospital, and she's been told by the doctors that it's completely normal for her to feel this way (they've assumed by now that she and Finn are more than simply friends).

There was one night where she had been cooking dinner for the both of them and Finn had been helping, but he told her that he felt sick and needed to lie down. By the time he had gotten to the couch, Rachel was leaning against the kitchen counter, head buried in her hands and crying uncontrollably.

She's always been a crier, but this is a new level for her. Rachel's never known someone to be as sick as Finn is.

The morning he wakes up and takes a shower and tells her that his hair is falling out, she decides to knit him a hat to keep his head warm and to keep him from walking around without any hair, or anything, just because she feels like he would feel insecure about it or something.

He tells her that he's not, but she doesn't believe him.

They're sitting on the couch together one night, Rachel in Finn's arms while she's knitting, watching something on the Food Network one night when he kisses her and she kisses him back, causing him to kiss her back again – only he _really _kisses her, causing her to drop the hat she's knitting to the floor and her legs to come up and straddle his waist, making her kiss him fiercely and lose herself for a moment before pulling away from him.

"We can't do this," she tells him, shaking her head at him. He looks at her, confused. "I mean, I want to, Finn, I – I really want to, but you're…"

"Rachel, I'll be fine," he tells her, pushing her hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. He drops a hand to her waist and traces her figure, sighing to himself. "I've wanted to do this since-"

"Since you kissed me that one night," she tells him, laughing to herself. "I know." She feels her heart swell and her stomach fill with butterflies, and she knows that he wants her, and it kills her because she wants him just as much, but she's afraid – and she doesn't want him to know, really.

"I'm just… I don't want to hurt you," she tells him, her voice dropping to a low, scared whisper. He looks at her and leans up, Rachel's hands falling behind his neck to support herself. "I mean, I don't know what you want and if you want to-"

"Rachel," he tells her, laughing as he cuts her off. "It's going to be fine. We'll just… take things slow, alright?"

She laughs and feels him pull her down onto his lap further, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

"Alright," she tells him, her voice soft and quiet. She likes how they whisper to one another despite being alone in her apartment. It makes her feel like there's something much bigger between them than she thinks there is, and she likes it. She likes the idea of Finn and her and if she were ten years younger, she would sketch their names together surrounded with little cartoon hearts in her notebooks.

He takes her shirt off and she removes his, spending more time with hands all over the bodies of one another and kissing one another than actually trying to be physical and rush into everything like two horny high schoolers. She's afraid to touch him and he's afraid to touch her, and she wouldn't have it any other way. It's almost better, actually.

She's never felt so connected with someone before – although she can't compare it to much, considering she's only been so involved with about three or four people in her entire life. He looks down at her and presses a kiss to her lips when she's ready to break, and it's enough to do it for her right there, her breath hitching in the back of her throat.

"I love you, Finn," she whimpers, her hips meeting his before nearly collapsing against the couch. He lays down on top of her, her nails raking down his back. For a moment, she's afraid of what she's said what she's said and she muses about taking it back or rewording her statement, but Finn presses a kiss to her lips and silences her.

"I love you too, Rachel." She kisses him back and feels her heart beat against his chest, her heart beating against his chest. They lie there with one another for a while until she falls asleep, his arms wrapped around her waist and holding her close against his chest.

She decides then and there, or at least before she falls asleep, that she doesn't want it any other way. Maybe Finn's come to her for a reason, like fate or some higher power controlling them like pawns or something. All she knows is that she loves him, and her heart can't afford to lose him any time soon.


	16. Chapter 16: Then

**Hey everyone!**

**I just wanted to thank everyone for all of the interest and love for this story. It's been extremely cathartic to write, and I feel as though it's the best writing I've done in a long time. This is one of the last three chapters – and although I can't promise the happiest of endings, I will say that I don't think it will make too many people upset! (If it still does, well, I hope you can recover.) An enormous thank you from the bottom of my heart – every notification, review, and favorite only pushes me forward in writing!**

**(A/N: Even though I've been writing the 'then' chapters from Finn's POV, I felt the need to write this one from both his and Rachel's POV instead. That, and this chapter is MUCH shorter than the other ones – their past wrapped up much quicker than I anticipated. :) Hopefully it's not too confusing!)**

She and Sam broke up a few weeks into July. Rachel didn't really want to blame it on anything in particular, so she just told him that things weren't working out between the two of them and called it quits.

"It's not you," she told him the afternoon she broke up with him, frowning sympathetically. "It's me." The two had gone to a frozen yogurt shop and were sharing a bowl of the only vegan option the shop had – which, much to Rachel's surprise, Sam always opted to share with her every time they went. "I mean, I just need to go to college with a clear head and focus on my schoolwork, and having a boyfriend would just get in the way of all of that, you know?"

Sam nodded and looked at her, surprised. "Yeah, I mean, I get it," he said, looking down into the bowl of frozen yogurt sitting between them on the table. "You're gonna go off and do huge things. You probably don't want a boyfriend."

Rachel didn't want to dwell on the thought of 'doing huge things' like he had brought up, because she knew that it wasn't going to be true. She was going to go to school and get a degree and live in Ohio for the rest of her life – and the faster she came to terms with that, she thought, the better off she would be in the long run.

"Just promise not to forget everyone when you're some big choral director, okay?" She couldn't help but crack a smile at his comment and sets her spoon down in the cup, nudging it towards Sam to finish. She didn't feel very hungry to begin with.

"I promise," she told him, standing up from the table and letting her hand rest on his own. Sam stood up next to her and she smiled, standing up on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. "Do you want to help me finish packing?"

He nodded and the two of them left, Rachel climbing into the passenger side of the car as Sam started the car up and pulled out of the parking lot.

Somewhere in the depths of her gut she felt like she was going to be sick, but she suppressed the feeling and looked back at Sam with a smile stuck to her face.

She was going to be fine if she just remembered to breathe.

:.:.:

Finn's deployment date was sometime in midsummer. He chose to fit in everything he would have into his time left in Ohio during a normal summer, which proved not to be too difficult of a feat. He seemed to fit in going to Six Flags and having day-long marathons of TV shows and spending days sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing while his mother was away at work. He knew once school had let out that his summer wouldn't be highlighted by much to begin with.

Quinn had left for school the second week of June. Finn didn't seem to notice when she left; the two of them not keeping much contact with one another after school. He didn't care, anyway. Quinn had turned into someone he didn't want to associate himself with anymore.

There was still a part of him that wanted to apologize to Rachel. That was one of the only things that made him want to stay in Ohio, especially after learning that she was staying. He knew that he hadn't redeemed himself for her yet – at least not in his eyes.

Maybe, he thought, he could go off and become a war hero or something. That way, when he got back home, he could find Rachel and tell her all about how he took a bullet for some fellow soldier because he felt that it was the right thing to do, and Rachel would swoon and think he was the most important person in the entire world – or at least in all of Ohio.

He knew that even if he did become a war hero, or win a Purple Heart, or save all of mankind from some crazy alien race, Rachel wouldn't see him any differently. He had let her down when she needed him the most, and he never apologized to her.

And judging by the way things were panning out, Finn would never have the chance to give Rachel the apology she deserved.

:.:.:

"I'm telling you, if you just lose the shoes, you'll be able to close this suitcase." Kurt sat down on top of the bright pink suitcase that was on Rachel's bed and sighed, Rachel not paying much attention to him. He stood up and dug inside the suitcase for a moment, fishing out a pair of red Mary Janes with a heel that was much higher than he was used to seeing her wear.

Kurt dangled them in front of Rachel as she stared at them, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. "You're never going to have an excuse to wear these, Rachel." He set them down on her bed carelessly and she picked them back up immediately, standing in front of Kurt with a scowl on her face.

"Then I'll just grab another suitcase then," she said, irritated. Kurt rolled his eyes and looked at her, watching as she walked into her closet and managed to extract another pink suitcase that looked nearly identical to the one on her bed.

She wasn't in the happiest of moods, and Kurt could tell. She wore a perpetual frown on her face and didn't seem like she was excited to go off to college as Kurt was.

"Hey, the U's not going to be that bad," Kurt told her, sitting up on Rachel's bed and looking at her with a smile, crossing his legs over one another. "I mean, I know a lot of people from high school are going, but it's college. You're never going to see them, and they're not going to be in any of your classes." He watched as Rachel opened the suitcase she had taken out and threw the shoes he had picked out into the pit of it.

Rachel looked up at Kurt and sighed, eyes beginning to water with tears.

"I'm not making the wrong choice, am I?" She pulled her hair into a ponytail and nervously threw it down her shoulder. "I mean, going to school and staying here to become a teacher-"

"You're going to do great, Rachel," he said, looking at her as she stood in front of him. "You're going to get this degree, and you can teach voice or something to make money, and we can move out to New York just like we planned last year."

She worried her hands together, bringing one hand up to bite off a thumbnail.

"Fine," she said, trying to think ahead to her future in college. Kurt was going to Cincinnati, but he got into the music conservatory. They had one of the best programs for musical theatre in the entire nation, and was practically known for cranking out Broadway stars every year. Even though he was staying in Ohio, Kurt still had good things going for him.

She, on the other hand, did not.

"Just think," Kurt said, offering her a broad smile. "In four years, we'll be in New York, living the dream."

She nodded along with Kurt, even though her head and her heart were in completely different places. Rachel had never had to worry about something like that before, and when she did, it was a completely different shift in her life.

And the worst part is, she doesn't think that there's going to be anything she can do about it.


	17. Chapter 17: Now

Their lives turn into provincial ones. Well, maybe not as provincial as the Stepford Wives, or the average family with 2.5 children and a dog, but it's provincial enough for the both of them. Rachel decides to turn the couch that Finn's been sleeping on ever since moving in with her back into a couch again, and he sleeps with her in her bedroom now.

She likes it. She's never had someone live with her before for love instead of convenience or someone sleep with her because they're more interested in talking to her afterwards until she falls asleep instead of leaving in the middle of the night because they have someone else that's slightly more important to sleep with.

For the first time in her entire life, Rachel feels truly wanted by someone else.

She treats him how she would a boyfriend or a husband (or at least how she _thinks _she would treat him if he actually were her boyfriend or husband). Rachel's never had a real boyfriend before. She doesn't include Quentin, because he was her high school sweetheart. Everyone's supposed to have a high school sweetheart, and she had hers and it ran its course. Only the lucky ones seem to make it out with their high school sweethearts in the end.

As far as Rachel's concerned, she's just… broken.

But Finn is too, or at least he tells her that he is. One night, after she climbs into bed and curls up under his arm by his side, she tells him how happy she is that he's staying with her and how everything's seemed to work out between the two of them. They haven't put a label on anything yet, only because they don't want to. _She _doesn't want to, and she's told Finn that before. She loves him and he loves her, and that seems to be enough for her.

"Would you let me call you my girlfriend if I weren't sick?" Finn asks her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She looks up at him with sad eyes, unsure as to how she should respond. "I mean, you know, if I weren't sick and you weren't so worried about losing me or anything. Would you let me?"

His words cut into her like a knife and she shakes her head quickly, moving a hand to touch the side of his face.

"No," she says, eyes wide. "No, Finn, I would never – it's not that," she tells him, her voice quiet. "I just don't want to feel like I'm going to lose you, even when I know that I'm not." She laughs bitterly to herself and tips her head up again to look at Finn, trying to smile as best as she can. "I'm _scared, _Finn, and I don't want – I don't want to lose you. Ever."

He laughs and touches her hair, causing Rachel to laugh herself. "You're not going to lose me," he tells her, taking her hands in his own. "I went into the doctor's today, and I had a bunch of tests done," he tells her, causing her heart to stop palpitating for a moment. "And I think things are looking up for me right now, so I wouldn't worry if I were you." He smiles softly and leans down to press a kiss to her lips, Rachel leaning into his chest and feeling him hold her close while he kisses her. "Besides," he says, taking one of her hands and pressing it against the left side of his chest. "You'll always be right here," he says, and she can tell that he knows he's sounding cheesy on purpose.

"Your heart's on _this _side," she tells him, moving her hand and laughing sweetly as she looks up at him. She watches as Finn smiles when he looks at her, making her feel like her heart's going to burst inside her chest if she's not careful.

Rachel looks at Finn again and smiles bashfully, touching his face gently with the side of her hand. "You know I love you, don't you?" Finn nods and looks down at Rachel, her smile feeling like it's able to light up the entire dimly lit room when he looks at her. "There's never been anyone else that I've ever felt this way about," she tells him, her voice quiet again. "And it means that much more to me that you feel the same way." She nuzzles his neck and holds him close, feeling like she never wants to let him go.

"I love you, Rachel," he tells her, taking her hand in his own again and squeezing it gently. "And, look, I know that everything sounds like it's going to be bad, but I promise, things will get better." He wraps his arms around her petite frame and pulls her close, eliciting a giggle from her lips. "In a month, we'll be better than ever."

"I hope so," she tells him, craning her neck down to kiss him again. She settles into bed next to him and sighs, feeling his arm still wrapped around her and holding her close. "I really hope so."

:.:.:

The cancer room, as Finn calls it (or the oncology center, as it's been appropriately titled) is at the very end of the hallway that they walk down when they first arrive at the hospital. It looks more like a living room; complete with tables and chairs and magazine displays fanned out for everyone to see. Their nurse offers them a pleasant smile before glancing down at her clipboard and telling them to follow after her as she turns down the hallway.

When Finn's name gets called by the nurse, he and Rachel stand up together, hands still locked in the others'. She doesn't want to let go of him; feeling the need to spend every moment possible in front of him, or by his side, or thinking about him.

They walk down the long, spacious corridor of the hospital, shoes clacking against the cold and disinfected tile floor. Hospitals have always struck a bigger fear in her than doctors' offices, mainly because it's where everything comes to end. Going to the hospital always means that something serious is going to happen, good or bad – and somewhere, something's there to stop it.

Maybe she should find her own room while they're at the hospital so they can make her heart stop palpitating.

"Here we are," the nurse says, stopping in front of a door that looks more like it belongs in an office than in a hospital. Rachel can feel her eyes trained on them as they walk into the room, and she hears her as she closes the door behind them.

She doesn't say anything, and Rachel thinks that it means something's wrong, or that something's not quite right. The door latching shut behind them sounds like it echoes and they sit down in the chairs that are perched in front of the desk where she can assume that the doctor is going to sit.

Finn sits down in one of the chairs and Rachel slowly follows suit; tentatively reaching for his hand as she looks at him.

"Finn," she says, her voice hoarse. He turns to look at her, tears welling in her eyes. "I know that I'm not supposed to be scared, but…" her voice trails off and she doesn't say anything, her tears beginning to get the best of her.

Finn squeezes her hand and pushes her hair out of her face as she looks at him.

"But you're scared?"

She nods her head and her eyes pinch shut, tears streaming down her face. "Yes," she says, beginning to whimper. "I'm afraid for you, and me, and us, and I don't want… I don't want to lose you."

Finn leans over in his chair and presses a kiss to her hair, Rachel's breathing beginning to even out. "You're not going to lose me," he says, holding her close to him. "We'll be fine, Rachel. I promise."

:.:.:

When the doctor tells them the news, she goes numb. It's like someone's unplugged her and she's left to float around and let her thoughts consume her for the time being.

She doesn't even cry, which surprises her. What's supposed to be such awful news washes over her like it's nothing. Her expression doesn't change and she doesn't turn to face Finn, who looks at her the second the doctor tells them what it is he needs to say.

According to the doctor, after his long spiel of how 'they tried everything' and how 'treatment might still help,' Finn's cancer has progressed into something called leptomeningeal carcinomatosis. It's rare, and it's scary, what with a big, long name like that. She hears Finn ask the doctor what it means, and he says that the cancer he had in his lungs has spread to the membranes surrounding his brain.

"We can continue to do chemotherapy, but the treatment's much more intense than what you've been receiving," the doctor tells Finn, who looks back at him with wide eyes. "And, the treatments will be much more costly," he adds, dropping his voice lower.

"And if I don't continue treatment," Finn begins, his voice close to silent. "What's going to happen?"

"Well, Finn, if you don't continue treatment, the most amount of time you'll have is… three months."

Rachel doesn't say much afterwards, but neither does Finn. He just nods and Rachel looks at him, eyes welling up with tears. She watches him as he nods as the doctor continues to speak, but his words turn into static. She doesn't hear anything anymore and she just watches; waiting for some sign from Finn to tell them that it's okay to leave or that the doctor's just kidding and he'll be just fine.

He never says anything like that.

"We do have counseling, for you and –" The doctor pauses and studies Rachel for a moment, offering her a sympathetic smile. "Your girlfriend, I'm assuming?"

Rachel nods her head, the first lucid moment she's had since entering the office.

"I'm his girlfriend," she says, almost so she's assuring herself of the fact. "_I'm _his girlfriend."

:.:.:

She doesn't try and cook anything for dinner that night and instead she orders Chinese food. They deliver it to her apartment and she pays the delivery boy, not saying anything to Finn as she sets his food down on the table by the couch.

It's like they've backtracked; Finn back on the couch and Rachel turning into a recluse that spends all of her time in her room.

It hurts to look at him now. The time she would think normal people would spend trying to squeeze in every last moment with their loved one is spent alone, sitting on her bed and flipping through TV channels while Berkley sits in her lap.

She knows that it's because she's afraid of what her future holds.

There's a knock on her door and she gets up to answer it, knowing that it's Finn. It's not like it would be anyone else, anyway. She gets up after setting her carton of food on her bed and walks towards the door, opening it slightly and resting against the door frame.

"Hey," he says, his voice soft. She tips her head up, heavy eyes looking up at him. "Rachel, we need to talk."

"About what?" She asks, folding her arms over her chest and holding herself. "About how you're not going to see Christmas, or how I'm afraid that I'm never going to be able to find someone like you ever again, or how I'm afraid that I might have to worry about this later, or something, and-"

"Rachel," he says, stopping her before she goes off on a tangent. His hands find purchase on her shoulders and she looks up at him, eyes wide. "Rachel, I… do you think this is easy for me either?"

She shakes her head and swallows thickly. "No," she finally says, shaking her head. "But Finn, you… you can still continue treatment. The doctor said that you have a chance to getting better if you keep on going in for chemo, and-"

"That's not going to cure anything," he tells her, looking down at his feet. She doesn't like how they're standing in the hallway; it's too claustrophobic for her. He waits a moment and Rachel walks closer towards him, wanting him to hold her, or touch her, anything. "If I go back into chemo, I'm going to be tired all of the time, and my hair's going to fall out again, and you're going to act that way you did the first time I went through chemo, and-"

"How did I act any differently?" She asks, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Finn walks towards her and places a hand on her waist, pulling her close. She stumbles over her feet slightly, knocking into his chest before tipping her head up to see him again.

"You were sad," he tells her, cupping her face in his hand, his thumb stroking her cheek. "And I don't want to go through that again… or make you go through it again."

Rachel shakes her head and sighs, a ragged breath slipping through her lips. "I love you," she says, trying to speak through her sobs. "And I want you to be at your happiest. But if you just want to throw your life away…"

Finn shakes his head and furrows his brow, touching her hair and playing with it between his fingers. "Rachel, whatever happens, I know that I haven't thrown my life away." She looks up at him and tries to muster up a smile through her tears that Finn wicks away with his thumb from her face. "Because I got to spend it with the one person who I know I won't regret spending time with."

She starts to cry and he pulls her in for an embrace, her head resting against his chest. He's still so much thinner than he had been before, still scaring Rachel every time she touches him.

"Don't leave me so soon," she whispers, her voice echoing in the narrow hallway. Finn laughs softly and holds her close, burying his nose in her hair.

"I'll try," he tells her, letting her hide herself in his arms. "I promise."

:.:.:

Finn dies on a Thursday. He had gone to bed early the night before after telling Rachel that he felt sick and wanted to go to bed early. In the moment, she had thought nothing of it. It was just something that she thought would be something he had done because he wanted to, or something.

But when she wakes up on Thursday morning and he's still there, not moving when she tries to wake him up.

It scares her more than anything in the entire world when he doesn't wake up. Even though she's been waiting for the day since Finn told her that he wasn't going to continue treatment, she's never expected it to happen so abruptly.

She calls the police and she sorts everything out in a decent amount of time. Rachel's never had to handle anything like this before, but she thinks she does a decent job of it. Besides crying when she had initially found Finn, she hasn't cried yet.

When she gets back to her apartment, however, and sees all of Finn's things strewn about her living room, and kitchen, and bedroom, all she can do is cry. She cries so much that she reaches the point where she runs out of tears, resulting in her sitting on the couch and just staring at the wall, trying to think of what she should do next.

It's like she's on a roller coaster, and she's just hit the biggest roadblock in the entire world, throwing her from the car and across the tracks. She's never felt this way about anyone or anything before. A week ago, all she could think about was how her heart swelled whenever she saw Finn, or smiled at him, or felt him pull her into his arms to kiss her. Now, she's a crying mess whenever she thinks about him.

She calls Kurt and tries to explain to him everything that's happened, and for what seems like the first time, he listens to her. He listens to her as she tells the story about how she and Finn had fallen in love and tries to make him believe that everything she's telling him is true, and she doesn't feel like he judges her so harshly anymore.

"Rachel, I'm sorry," Kurt says into the phone, Rachel trying everything she can to keep herself from crying like she's gone insane. He sounds worried, almost as much as she is. "If there's anything I can do, Rachel, tell me, and I'll-"

"It's okay," she says, her voice soft. Rachel's never had to face something like this head on before, but she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she's doing a good job. "I… I think I'm going to be alright."

"You loved him, didn't you?" Kurt asks, his own voice beginning to fill with tears.

"No," Rachel says, shaking her head even though she's still on the phone. "I _love _him."

:.:.:

Rachel begins packing Finn's things into boxes and puts them in the closet in her hallway. It takes time for her to find the will to actually do it, but she manages. She finds his clothes and packs them up and puts them away, choosing a Saturday out of the month to put away all of his things.

Most of her time is spent looking at things, needing to take the time to cry about everything from time to time. She doesn't find a methodical way to do it; she just puts on the radio in the background and begins to do what she feels she needs to do.

Around noon, she's in her bedroom when she finds the hat that she had knit for Finn in the corner of her room. She picks it up and holds it to her chest, still able to smell his cologne on it. For a moment, she thinks about crying, but before she can think about crying, she can feel what feels like a crumpled up piece of paper inside of the hat. Her hand fishes out a red envelope that she studies for a moment; her name printed across the front.

Upon further inspection, she opens the envelope and pulls out a piece of stationary, unfolding it and beginning to read.

_Dear Rachel,_

_If you've found this, it's because I'm not here anymore. I'm not really sure where someone goes when they die, but hopefully it's somewhere better than here. I wrote this to you in a letter because I've always been afraid to say it to you in person – and hopefully, when you're done reading this, you'll feel better about everything. I just wanted to take the time to apologize to you, Rachel. Everything I ever did to you in high school was wrong, and it was wrong because I didn't do anything to you – and that was why I was so horrible to you, because I didn't do anything. I should have been smarter and I should have stood up for you and I should have told you then what I've finally found the courage to tell you now – that I love you, and I never want to lose you. I don't know what it was, but when we were younger, I was always afraid to tell you about how I felt about you. I was stupid and I cared too much about what other people thought of me in high school, and it's one of my biggest regrets. I'm almost positive that it's the reason why I missed out on the greatest thing in the entire world – you._

_I think I should tell you why I came to you in the first place. It feels weird to tell you this way, just because I feel like I shouldn't be telling you in a letter, but you deserve to know no matter what. I was in the army after high school, but I got deployed about a year ago. When I had gotten back to America from the war, I thought it would be a good idea to stop in New York, because I thought that was where you were going to be. I always thought that you were going to be some big Broadway star in New York, I just didn't know how famous you were going to be when I got back. When I got there, though, I found out you weren't there, and so I decided that I was going to try and move back here, to Ohio, to find you. Before I actually made the decision, though, I found out that I had cancer – and it was really mild back then, but I still had cancer, and it scared me. I called my mom and I told her, and I told her about how I wanted to move back home to see you, and to fix everything between us. I faked a wounded leg and got the first flight here, knowing that you would be willing to pick me up. And, I guess the rest is kind of history – if you want to put it that way. _

_The only thing is, I was never expecting to fall in love with you. I came to Ohio to fix everything between us, but I never thought that would mean that I would get to fall in love with one of the smartest, funniest, prettiest girls in the entire world. I'm sorry that I was such a coward and could never tell you so many years ago, but I love you, Rachel. If I were a better writer, I would put a bunch of metaphors, or similes, or something like that in here to help prove my point, but I don't think I have to because you already know how I feel about you. I love you more than anyone or anything else in the entire world and I would never have it any other way._

_I think the one downfall to you, however, Rachel, is that you never took time to do things for yourself. You were so scared about everything that you never found the time to do what you wanted, and I want to give you that chance. In the envelope is the rest of the money that was in my savings account – and it's not much, I know, but it's something. I want you to take the money and buy a one-way ticket to New York, and I want you to do whatever it is you want to do out there. You're too big for Ohio, Rachel. You were always supposed to be a bright, shining star in New York, and you can still be that. Go prove everybody wrong and make me proud._

_I want you to know that living with you has been the best experience of my entire life. I've never met anyone as compassionate, loving, and amazing as you. I don't want to say that this is goodbye, because it isn't. Wherever I end up – heaven, or hell, or wherever, I think I'll always be with you, Rachel. Maybe that way, you won't be so broken anymore – even though I never thought you were broken to begin with._

_Love,  
Finn_


	18. Epilogue

_**Three years later**_

"It's a pomegranate," she says, holding the red fruit in her hand and handing it to Blaine. "You crack them open and eat the seeds inside. Haven't you ever had a pomegranate before?"

Blaine looks at her with a smile takes the fruit in his hands. "I have, just never… in its raw form before." He sets it down in the basket with the rest of the produce and they continue to walk through the narrow aisles of the market; people standing in every corner and deciding to stop in the middle of aisles like it's a personal hobby for them.

Rachel giggles and adjusts her sunglasses on her face, feeling Blaine trail behind her. She doesn't normally wear sunglasses; she feels like they swallow her face and somehow make her face look rounder, but it's gotten to the point where she feels like she needs to wear them now.

It's not like she's Kanye West, but she's not little Rachel Weisberg from Ohio anymore. At least she isn't in New York, anyway. The past three years have changed her.

"Are you nervous for tonight?" Blaine asks, looking at her as she looks down at the cart of oranges in front of them. "I mean, there's the performance alone, and then there's-"

"I'm fine," she says, her heart not trying to escape her chest like it normally does. "I know that they say it's bad if you don't get nervous before performances, but I don't get nervous anymore," she says, turning around to look at him. "I just get excited."

Blaine laughs and follows behind Rachel with a smile stuck to his face. "Of course," he says, rolling his eyes slightly. "You would be the only one who doesn't get nervous about performances."

Rachel turns around over her shoulder and shoots Blaine a smile. "Oh, stop," she says, finding his hand that isn't holding the basket full of fruit and taking it in her own. "Come on," she tells him, pulling him along through the aisles and groups of people with their backs turned to them. "We'll be late for rehearsal."

:.:.:

Kurt looks at her as she stands in front of her bathroom mirror, playing with his cufflinks nervously. "Will you hurry up?" He asks, beginning to pace around her bedroom nervously. "I don't want to be the type to show up late to something like this, Rachel. You, of all people, should feel the same way."

She doesn't laugh at him as she studies her reflection in the mirror, trying to make sure that her face looks like it's been ripped out of a magazine instead of the way it looked that morning.

"We're not going to be late," she says, paying more attention to her hair than whatever it is that Kurt's saying. "Blaine might make you late, but I assure you, _I_ won't end up being late."

She can hear Kurt laugh at her from the other room and she ignores it, rolling her eyes as she looks into the mirror. Rachel's never cared about anything Kurt's said, or at least not truly taken the sarcastic things he says to heart. She normally just lets him say whatever it is he wants to say and forgets about it.

"I thought you and Blaine were supposed to show up together?" He pokes his head through the bathroom door as Rachel pushes her earrings in. "You know, to keep the myth that you two are dating still alive?"

Rachel laughs to herself and steps out of the bathroom, the skirts of her dress trailing behind her on the ground. "I don't think that's as widely speculated as you think it is," she tells him, a smile stuck to her face. "It's not like Blaine and I are famous, anyway. Besides, I wouldn't want to deny you the right of walking down a red carpet with your boyfriend."

She turns over her shoulder and watches as Kurt smiles to himself, looking like he's trying to hide his happiness from her. Rachel already knows how happy he and Blaine are together, and she would never want to step between them. Watching the two of them together makes her happier than anything else in the entire world, and she feels proud to know that it was partly her doing that brought them together.

Kurt looks at Rachel as she slips into her shoes and she smiles, pushing the tendrils she's pulled from her messy bun a few moments ago out of her eyes so that they fringe her face. "I was telling you, Rachel, purple really is your color." He crosses his arms over his chest and steps back to look at her like he's just completed some masterpiece.

"Thank you," she says, smiling brightly as she spins around in her dress, the long, flowing skirt kicking up around her feet. She touches the necklace that falls down the low neckline of her dress, looking back up at Kurt with a smile. "I like it."

"Good," he tells her, walking towards her and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "Because you look beautiful."

Rachel feels the blood rush to her cheeks and Kurt wraps her in an embrace, making her rest her chin on his shoulder.

"You know, Rach, he would be so proud of you," Kurt says, his voice quiet. Rachel feels her mouth go dry and she pulls away from Kurt, shaking her head.

"Don't," she says, grabbing his hand and giving it a squeeze. She doesn't want to go there; not yet, anyway. "Let's just… let's do this for him, alright?" She feels herself begin to tear up and she laughs, wiping underneath her eyes carefully.

Kurt smiles and lets go of her hand, walking towards the doorway.

"Come on," he says, Rachel trailing after him through the door, both of them laughing. "We don't want you to mess up your makeup or anything."

Rachel giggles and the two head into the hall of her apartment, walking side by side until they make it out the door.

It's the first time Rachel's ever really been able to walk next to someone down the hallway of an apartment she occupies.

:.:.:

She's been receiving compliments on her dress all night. Every time someone tells her that she looks beautiful, or that the shade of purple compliments her skin perfectly, or that her shoes are to die for, she just smiles and tells them that's it's all Kurt's doing. It makes her happy and proud of him, in a way. He deserves just as much happiness as she does, or Blaine, or anyone else, for that matter.

There's something so special about doing what she's doing; walking down a red carpet and having people take her picture and ask her who she's wearing and asking whether or not she's nervous for the evening ahead of her. For some reason, she's able to stand there, proud and tall (or at least as tall as she can be in five inch heels) and answer all of the questions the reporters have for her, smiling and happy.

Despite all of the excitement of the night, however, she doesn't have a speech prepared. It's her first time getting nominated for one of these, and she's up against all of these people who line their fireplace mantles with Tony Awards. She highly doubts that she's going to win.

:.:.:

When they announce her name the first time, she looks at Kurt, who's sitting next to her while she takes up the aisle seat. The producers have instructed her on where to sit; they put all of the award nominees in the aisle seats so the cameras can get better shots of them and so she doesn't have to worry about tripping over someone's feet if, by the off chance, she actually wins.

Kurt turns to look at her and squeezes her hand, Blaine looking at her with a smile.

She's already had the discussion with Kurt if she wins. She's supposed to thank everyone, even the people she doesn't remember meeting, because it'll make her look like she's a good person or something like that. They never really went over it in great detail, mainly because Rachel kept on telling Kurt that she stood no chance at winning.

However, the moment she stops thinking about how nervous she is that she's even nominated for anything, the person presenting the award up on stage reads her name off of the card that she's been holding in her hands since she's walked on stage.

Rachel doesn't breathe; she just sits there, stunned into silence. It takes Kurt squeezing her hand and telling her to get up to pull her out of her chair and down the aisle, trying to keep herself from crying as she walks down to the stairs of the stage and up the stairs, hoping that she doesn't trip over the skirts of her dress as she climbs the stairs to accept her award.

The woman presenting the award accepts Rachel in an embrace before a tall, skinny woman that's younger than Rachel walks out and hands her the trophy that she accepts with shaking hands.

By the time she regains her composure and turns around in front of the podium, she can see the audience on their feet, applauding her for either the speech she hasn't given yet, or the great feat she's accomplished by winning this award.

Either way, she's in shock.

"Oh my God," she says, because it's all she can manage to get out. For the first time, Rachel doesn't know what to say. She's normally so well-versed and can speak circles around everyone – until she's put in a position where she has to speak in front of people like this. "Um, I don't know what to say," she says, hands shaking as she tries to hold her trophy up for the audience to see.

(She's been told by the producers that if she wins, she needs to hold the trophy up at chest level so that the TV camera can get a shot of it.)

The audience roars in laughter as she stammers, causing the other half of her vocabulary to go flying out the window.

"I, um, I don't know what to say," she says, feeling her heart want to beat out of her chest. "I know that everyone says that they're not expecting to win, but I really, _really _wasn't expecting to." The audience starts to laugh again and Rachel smiles, still trying to gain her footing on the stage. "I, um, I want to thank all of the producers, and the directors, and everyone else whose names I'm forgetting," she says, prompting the audience to start laughing again. It causes her to start laughing nervously, looking out into the audience for any sign of Kurt or Blaine or anyone else she knows. "I want to thank the people here tonight who chose to put their faith in a music teacher from Ohio with some long lost dream, because I wouldn't be standing here today without them," she says, holding the trophy up to her chest. "Blaine Anderson, the best co-star I could ever ask for, who's seen me at my very best and at my very worst, and Kurt, my very best friend, who moved out here with me three years ago and still hasn't left, no matter how many times he's threatened to do so."

She can see Kurt laughing from the audience; her empty seat visible from where she's standing.

"But this award isn't for me, it's for someone else," she says, feeling tears start to spring to her eyes. "Um, a few years ago, there was someone who came back into my life and showed me that it was alright to accept people despite their mistakes," she says, continuing to cry despite the fact that she's on national television. "We taught each other how to appreciate another." She takes a deep breath and sighs, wiping her eyes and trying not to smear her makeup. "And he's not here with us anymore, but this is for Finn," she says, seeing Kurt in the audience, crying along with her. "I wouldn't be here tonight without him. Thank you."

The music cue plays her off and she takes her leave off stage, not noticing the camera that follows her out or the women that flank her from either side.

She doesn't notice anything, to be completely honest. Not the music, not the audience, or the host that walks back out on stage the second she's done.

For the first time in three years, Rachel feels like there's closure between her and Finn and everything else in the world. No matter what, she knows that she'll be just fine. She may not always have the best of days every single day for the rest of her life, but no one does. Perfect or broken, no one does.

Besides, she's not broken anymore.

She's stitched up, and so is he.


End file.
